The Interoperable Response and Preparedness Platform (IRAPP) network – the only nationwide network
Mutualink enables the secure sharing of communication and data content for streamlined operations and security within and among the entities pictured above. In our complex society, Federal, State and municipal governments and the private sector need to better communicate within and among organizations in a secure fashion and without geographic bounds.
Mutualink simply places radio, video and data media onto whatever wired or wireless IP connectivity exists, secures it and enables it to be shared within and outside that organization. Mutualink is uniquely able to accomplish this through a combination of a distributed architecture and security. The architecture ensures sovereignty of the network participants; no other agency can reach in and access media that is not theirs. The security in the architecture eliminates outside threats to the content.
Public Safety
The Problem We Solve
Mutualink overcomes the public safety challenges of needing to keep communications siloed and private in some cases, while needing to collaborate with other agencies and jurisdictions in other cases. And as we evolve from a close-knit narrowband neighborhood to a wide-reaching broadband world, the benefit of sharing video and data is as important as the need to share voice.
After action reports frequently cite lack of communications as a point of failure during both exercises and actual incidents such as active shooters. Recommendations often include implementing technology to facilitate bridging of disparate radio systems when multiple agencies and jurisdictions respond to a single event. In these cases, the goal is to share situational awareness – a goal on which Mutualink is focused. Mutualink enables the secure onboarding of media and content regardless of the type (e.g. voice, video, information) or method of connectivity.
The Solution
Mutualink provides secure inter-agency and cross-jurisdiction communications with a network of networks: an invitation-based IP network that bridges voice, video and data shared from any device. The Interoperable Response and Preparedness Platform (IRAPP) network supports the interconnection of land mobile radio (LMR), VoIP push-to-talk, wireline, cellular, satellite telephone, public address and intercom systems. Schools and private enterprise can stream live video (analog or IP) without giving up control.
Interoperable Communications
For public safety, interoperable communications means overcoming the limitations of radio, video and information siloes. As a first responder priority, it means that local, state, territorial and federal agencies and private entities can collaborate to resolve incidents, regardless of whether they have a previously-executed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). It means that no one needs to give up control of their radios or video management systems. Most importantly, it means never having to hear a dispatcher say, “I don’t know how to bridge the systems.”
Reducing Time to Resolution
The result and intent of highly coordinated communications is to reduce the time it takes to resolve incidents. In worst-case scenarios, saving time means saving lives. Even in daily altercations, time saved results in avoided escalation. In repeated drills and exercises, Mutualink technology is proven to reduce time to incident resolution by as much as 50%.
Public Safety Agencies Prepare for FirstNet
Mutualink was a proud technology partner for a mock disaster drill in Arizona led by state, local, and tribal public safety agencies. The exercise included testing of Band 14 interoperability, in advance of the much-anticipated roll-out of FirstNet Public Safety Broadband Network.
National Vision Whitepaper
Despite a decade of significant investments and concerted efforts, a pervasive, national communications interoperability solution for emergency response has remained a bridge too far with, at best, small pockets of interoperable communications ability existing among a few select agencies. Emergency events such as the World Trade Center attacks, the Columbine School shootings, Hurricane Katrina, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Aurora, CO movie theater shootings and host of other natural, accidental and man-made incidents exposed and will continue to expose the persistent and prevailing problem of a lack of effective coordinated communications between first responders and other emergency support and critical infrastructure organizations that are critical to responding to, mitigating and recovering from disasters. Perhaps we have been trying to solve the wrong problem, or at least we have been trying to solve it the wrong way.
