First responders at any size event depend on reliable communication to ensure a successful and safe outcome. In preparation for the Super Bowl in 2022, Los Angeles area public safety agencies’ used the FirstNet Authority’s pre-planning event support to help maximize broadband capabilities. This free and unique service from the FirstNet Authority resulted in more timely and efficient decision-making, better coordinated responses, and well-managed resources and logistics.
Blog
Jeff Pierce has served for decades as South Dakota’s statewide interoperability coordinator and engineering manager for the Bureau of Information and Telecommunications. On the brink of retirement, Pierce shares his vantage point looking at the past, present, and future of public safety communications. No matter where Pierce looks, he sees interoperability as the key to effective public safety communications.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Public Safety Communications Research Division (PSCR) frequently collaborates with the First Responder Network Authority to advance public safety communications. Whether partnering on prize challenges, standards development, R&D testing, or the Public Safety Immersive Test Center, the two organizations are working together to spur technology development for first responders.
One thing the 9-1-1 community learned from the pandemic was the need to plan for alternate ways to work. Rather than be tied to workstations at fixed locations, 9-1-1 telecommunicators need flexibility to remotely take, dispatch, and supervise calls. In December 2021, Maryland telecommunicators put FirstNet to the test, demonstrating the network’s connectivity and reliability during remote operations.
Local and state public agencies and hundreds of attendees gathered in Sonoma to participate in a full-scale earthquake response exercise hosted by the California National Guard and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services Fire Rescue Branch. At the response exercise, FirstNet was onsite to ensure that technology ran smoothly and supplied deployable assets like High Power User Equipment, or devices that have a cellular modem enabling users to connect to a cellular network.