News

New Jersey’s piece of the nation’s emergency communications broadband network got its first test in August when state and local law enforcement tried it for the first time during two large outdoor concerts in Atlantic City. The inaugural real-world implementation of a wireless broadband network for first responders, known as FirstNet, operated without a hitch.

Members of the Atlantic City Police Department and the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness reported they were able to communicate via radio and cellular channels and share video feeds across the JerseyNet interoperable system during Maroon 5 and Rascal Flats concerts that attracted crowds of nearly 50,000 people each.

Interoperable solutions provider Mutualink and three partners—PMC Associates, Oceus Networks and Hughes—next week will demonstrate their collaborative capabilities that are being deployed in the New Jersey public-safety LTE early-builder project.

Mutualink will show its interoperability capabilities on the show floor—the partnering companies are using combined space in booths 2236, 2238 and 2137 in the exhibit hall at the APCO show in Washington, D.C.—where a trailer with an LTE system on wheels (SOW) and a tactical node will be displayed, according to Mutualink CTO Joe Boucher.

“The system on wheels includes some Mutualink PTT gateway capability, and the tactical node contains additional PTT capability, as well as radio gateways and video gateways,” Boucher said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “Between the system on wheels and the tactical node, these units will be able to offer multimedia collaboration between on-scene agencies, even when there’s no backhaul present to the greater network at large.

New Jersey’s deployable public-safety LTE system will include collaboration software from Mutualink that is designed to ensure local-area interoperability via multiple technologies in almost all circumstances, as well as long-range interoperability when backhaul connectivity is available.

In cooperation with FirstNet, the state of New Jersey this year is establishing a first-responder LTE system comprised entirely of deployable equipment. Mutualink’s media-cohesion solution—demonstrated last fall in the Urban Shield exercise with system-on-wheels (SOW) partner Oceus Networks—will be deployed throughout the system to provide flexible communications, according to Mike Wengrovitz, Mutualink’s vice president of innovation.

The ongoing terrorist siege of a Kenyan Mall offers another clue in the evolving strategy of radical Islamist terrorists. As I have previously written, the Mumbai Hotel attacks represented an evolutionary step in terror thinking. With the hardening and increased security around air transportation, terrorists have changed tactics and moved to other more vulnerable civilian […]