[Aloha]

As someone who builds telecommunications systems for first responders, I'm not convinced that a chat service, and online technology is better than narrowband 2-way radio, and paper maps.

These backcountry places often have no cell service, and paper maps don't have technical difficulties - and are easy/cheap to duplicate and hand out, in addition to being naturally rugged. So this means, expensive non-terrestrial communications, and expensive ruggedized devices.

While this is purportedly the problem firstnet is supposed to solve, I'm skeptical that it will solve it, or that the other issues (technical and otherwise) blocking adoption will be overcome.

[rsync]

I am a firefighter/EMR in California.

There is nothing wrong with two way radios, per se. The issue is the FCC "typing" rules that disallow a single device operating on multiple, disparate frequency bands.

Imagine I respond to a car accident and need to call for a helicopter and arrange a landing zone. In this situation, I will be juggling four brick sized radios throughout the duration of that call.[1] Possibly while driving.

We have started to funnel most comms to "tablet command mobile" on our personal phones, which is all text based and ties into GPS map on the phone, etc. - this is very efficient and works very well, but it is heavily dependent on infrastructure we don't control (the mobile phone network).

Anything complicated and we're juggling four bricks again. It's very frustrating, especially in an era of SDRs that could very obviously give me p25+calcord+GMRS all in one simple device.

[1] Pager that the call came in on, county P25 radio that we use all the time, Hi-Band radio to speak on "calcord" to the helicopter, GMRS handheld for traffic control.

[Aloha]

There is nothing in Part 90 that prevents a multi-band device, Motorola, Harris and Kenwood both sell multiband P25 devices (V/U, U/800, V/LTE, et al). Motorola, Harris and Kenwood (tait as well) also support multiple trunking/signaling systems on the same device as well.

What you're running into is agencies not wanting to interop - GMRS is a special case, because its a licensed by rule service (Part 95), but everything else, everything public safety and commercial can all be loaded in one radio, legally and technically (GMRS will technically work, its just not strictly legal - but the rules for Part 95 are widely flouted) - it takes agencies buying multiband radios (they're expensive) - and agencies willing to cooperate to share system keys (and encryption keys) which they loathe to do, because it means giving up control.

Interoperability is a huge issue with public safety, and it wont be fixed by broadband, it will only be fixed when a bunch of people die directly because of it, and then the public demand something be done - these agencies have no incentive to cooperate (quite the opposite, they might get less funding if they did).

[rsync]

Yes, there are multi-frequency devices, but they are all in the same "range" or "band" or "grouping" of frequencies (whatever it is we're calling that).

I'm talking about a combination hi-band, lo-band, GMRS, P25, paging, etc. radio. I should be able to tune National Weather Service on it if I want to.

When I talk about this, ham guys get all huffy about FCC this and that and what kind of anarchy do I want to live in. Whatever.

What I am telling you is that, on the ground, it's a shitshow (with regard to physical radios) and it's frustrating to know that it's a political problem, not a technical one.

[Aloha]

You can order a radio with High VHF, UHF, 700/800, 900, LTE or with any of the two above, Harris has the (it does something we affectionately call DC-Daylight - aka, the entire EM spectrum), SG-XG100 I think does basically everything, 30MHz to 1000MHz.

Low Band is a special case, because of the sheer antenna size, which is huge, and unwieldily low band handhelds are also near useless.

Ignore the ham guys, they dont know much about part 90 (other than they are correct that the Baofeng Radios are probably not type accepted.).

[schoolornot]

It doesn’t help that the protocols are all proprietary and/or encumbered with patents. An open source version of Brandmeister would go a long, long, way.

[Aloha]

None of the protocols are encumbered, P25 and DMR are both open standards - the audio codecs they use however, are not.

Brandmeister wouldn't fix anything in the public safety space as nothing in public safety is DMR.

[FireBeyond]

> Imagine I respond to a car accident and need to call for a helicopter and arrange a landing zone. In this situation, I will be juggling four brick sized radios throughout the duration of that call.[1] Possibly while driving.

Oof, that's painful. Airlift here has their choppers programmed with all the VHF and UHF frequencies for effectively every county in Western Washington.

[tinus_hn]

> The issue is the FCC "typing" rules that disallow a single device operating on multiple, disparate frequency bands.

My phone that connects to multi band WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, wireless charging and 2g, 3g and 4g disagrees with that statement.

[viraptor]

Without much knowledge about the process: Is it a problem to have it handled via some centre? I.e. you're asking X to dispatch all of those requests for you which would free you up to drive? (And get either one of those calls connected directly to you as needed)

[FlyMoreRockets]

Exactly this. I spent decades as a FF/EMT and that's the way it was typically done.

I did however, often carry a Baofeng programmed with _all_ the services with which I was likely to interact as a backup: MedEvac, EMS, law enforcement and fire services. Yes, I am a licensed ham operator.

The problem is there is no national emergency interop frequency plan, each state, county and city does things differently.

[NovemberWhiskey]

DHS publishes the National Interoperability Field Operations Guide which includes a national channel plan for calling, simplex and deployable repeater operation.

Each state/county/etc. may have different licensing, but they are also encouraged to program the NIFOG channel plans when space is available on radios.

[hatsunearu]

One of the proposed benefits of 4G/5G is that they can make microcells that can do exactly that, with the client devices being regular phones.

[e_d_e_v]

Well, it seems ridiculous to say that, because there have been 3g microcells (openbsc, for example) forever. It seems bizarre that we couldn't have a switch in every truck that turns it into a mobile microcell for <$100. The backhaul is the problem, because normal microcells are connected to the internet via hardline IP communication . . . . which could be done with modern satellite. The problem is that if you are selling anything to any kind of government agency, you absolutely want them _not_ to be able to use any commodity component like a "cell phone"

[Aloha]

Motorla sells LTE enabled radios, but changing from a narrowband air interface to a wideband one doesnt get you much, terrestrial can work in these situations, they dont need phone calls, they need radio and data communications - mostly data.

[frogblast]

I'm not involved in firefighting, I just spend a lot of time with maps planning out hikes:

I find that paper maps are dramatically better for me than anything on a screen, simply because they can be so much bigger and higher resolution at the same time. It is far easier to get a feel for an area on a table-top sized map printed at high PPI than on my 4K 27" monitors.

As for rapidly tracking the fire perimeters: Despite what the original article says, this mapping process is already happening. You can see the very outlines updated daily, with lots of fine detail, on inciweb.

[klyrs]

When I was in search and rescue, we made extensive use of paper maps. Nice rite-in-the-rain jobbers, useful in a downpour. And sometimes we'd need to take notes on them. With a pencil! In the rain! grumble grumble kids these days. Try that with a capacitive touchscreen...

[duiker101]

I am one of the kids of these days, but I know absolutely nothing about anything so I don't mean this in a mean spirited way but I am genuinely curious:

if you have paper in the rain, can't you have a water resistant device? Generally, they are both thing that I wouldn't necessarily associate with doing well in the rain...

[vidanay]

Try this: Put on your winter gloves, climb in the the shower, turn the water on ice cold, and see how well you are able to operate your iPad.

At least with paper maps and a #2 pencil, you have a fighting chance in those conditions.

[klyrs]

My phone works fine in the rain. The touchscreen is garbage, because it can't differentiate my finger from a puddle on the screen. Granted, there are pressure sensitive touchscreens out there. If you want a good map that you can take notes on, you'll need a custom app. In my experience, writing on screens is very fussy business. So you might be able to a custom app, custom hardware, maybe spending thousands per unit.

But, paper. I mentioned a brand name. It's wonderful stuff, nothing like the paper you're thinking of. This solution costs a few bucks per person.

https://www.riteintherain.com/

Edit: this "rain" crap is a digression from the "fire" problem. I don't have experience there, but I imagine "the electric infrastructure and cell towers burnt down" is more of an issue... again, paper and pencil wins.

[TeMPOraL]

> Edit: this "rain" crap is a digression from the "fire" problem. I don't have experience there, but I imagine "the electric infrastructure and cell towers burnt down" is more of an issue... again, paper and pencil wins.

WRT. paper vs. touchscreens and fire, I imagine two extra factors come into play. One, protective equipment may not play well with touchscreens (are there capacitive screen-friendly pads for gloves that won't burn off?). Two, heat in general. Phones and tablets don't like it all that much, and can easily start behaving weirdly and/or shut down when being used in a car in summer, much less next to an actual fire.

[cinntaile]

Nowadays decent hiking maps are made of Tyvek or a similar material so they're waterproof. A water resistant device works too but not as well when there are raindrops on it. I guess the moisture messes with the capacitive screen, the device can also stop working at a really incovenient time. That can't really happen with a regular map.

[superhuzza]

Same in my experience, for both climbing and hiking paper maps and topos are much better than digital.

[jbay808]

And the paper map doesn't run out of batteries!