Cyren Call Gets a Break

Cyren Call is the brainchild of Nextel’s co-founder, Morgan O’Brien. It’s a highly controversial approach to providing public safety agencies a nationwide, interoperable communications network. I doubt you’ll find many people who understand public safety communication needs, who won’t appreciate the proposal. It’s actually a straightforward idea that’s way overdue. Take funding from Capitol Hill; mix it with some spectrum from the FCC, and presto! You have a seamless national public safety network.

I like the straightforward concept. It bypasses virtually all of the interoperability issues experienced between the myriad of technologies and sections of spectrum. The one area that I have the least amount of confidence in, is where the proposal offers to share the network with the public at large. The idea is that since public safety agencies will only tax the system with high bandwidth usage in the occasional emergency situation, we might as well put the unused bandwidth to use the rest of the time. The concept has been tried elsewhere, but I’m not aware of a truly successful large scale attempt to share private/public radio networks. The requirements for uptime, emergency repairs, and many other issues have never been addressed to my (and apparently anyone else’s) satisfaction.

Cyren Call got recently got a shot in the arm when the new Chairman of the FCC actually acknowledged it as a worthy plan -worthy enough to ask for comments. When the FCC asks for public comments, it frequently precedes something getting approved. But there are still some major hurdles. The proposed spectrum isn’t actually available, and the backup plan is to use the new spectrum that has just been set aside for public safety use. It would basically require either every individual public safety agency in the nation to volunteer to give it up, or the FCC would have to take it all back. As unlikely as either may sound, I think the general concept is sound enough that I’ll do what I can to see it move forward.

Karaoke on Steroids

For my oldest daughter’s 16th birthday this week, I bought her and my wife front row center seats to a Utah Symphony performance at Weber State University. Keith Lockhart has been the symphony’s conductor for xxx years, and he was in top form that night. The a cappella group “Rockapella” also performed. The entire night was a tribute to the 70’s, ending in a medley that included several Karaoke numbers. They actually scrolled the words on the back wall of the stage, while Keith Lockhart attempted –with varied levels of success to get the entire audience to sing along.

Since the audience seemed to be fading out on him, Mr. Lockhart decided to take things up a notch by leaving the orchestra leader…less, as he grabbed a microphone and jumped down to the front row of audience members. Did I mention that I had front-row seats? Trying hard to give my daughter the unforgettable experience of singing karaoke with a full orchestra (while attempting to distract from myself of course), I pointed to her. Instead, Mr. Lockhart put his arm around me, put his cheek next to mine, and together we sang (and I’m using that term in the loosest possible sense) the entire last verse of “Feelings”. There’s a reason why he’s a conductor and not a singer, and why I’m neither. Everyone in the sold-out crowd found that out for themselves.

Untimely Jury Duty

As of last Monday, I was promoted to a new position within the new Department of Technology Services. Imagine how exciting it was for me to be summoned to jury duty on the first day in my new position. Having served on a jury just over two years, ago, I was aware that there would be dozens of prospective jurors, with only a fraction unlucky enough to actually get snared in the dragnet and sit on the case. Yep, they got me again.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know any of the parties in the case, or their attorneys. I don’t have any hearing or visual impairments. I haven’t experienced any similar situations. I hadn’t previously purchased any non-refundable cruise tickets, and though it would have been less painful, I didn’t have any surgeries scheduled.

Lacking a thing as useful as the ‘Sorting Hat’ in Harry Potter’s selection experience, they actually drew names out of a box (how unimaginative).

But we got the county back. When we went into deliberate the case, we were all unanimous, but we stalled long enough to get them to order us a couple of Pizza Hut Supreme Pan Pizzas –with buffalo wings on the side.

Public Safety Interoperability
I think all of us who are involved with public safety communications tend to be just a bit hypocritical. A city focuses on the goal of a single IT infrastructure for all of its agencies. A county feels stress when the cities within their boundaries won't agree on a single communications solution. "Why can't these cities understand how critical it is that they can all communicate on a common system?" The state is no exception. I feel the same frustrations when I look around the state and think "Why can't the cities and counties see how critical it is that they can communicate across a common system?" Of course I rarely stop to consider how federal agencies feel about the fact that our systems in Utah aren't the same as those in our surrounding states.

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to travel to other states recently and review their public safety radio networks. I've now been to North Dakota, Wyoming, and Nevada. It's revealing to get a sense of the challenges faced by other jurisdictions. It's sobering to see that Utah's challenges are very similar to those of other states.

The one thing that I take away from these meetings more than most; the one concept that I most want to convey to those I work with throughout all levels of government is this: It's not about technology. It's about people. We owe it to those we serve to find a way to work together toward common goals. It's both lazy and a breach of the public's trust for us to take our portion of funding and build isolated infrastructures for our agencies.

Sooner or later interoperability will have to be defined at the federal level. With programs such as SAFECOM, the federal government has attempted to persuade us to work together –and with some varying levels of success. True interoperability will require a standard to emerge. If the federal government can get the three crucial ingredients together: a standard, finance and spectrum, success is inevitable.

Seal Generator
Would you like to give your documents and web pages that extra bit of officiality? I found this nifty web site that will help you create your own custom seal. The library of icons is a bit sparse. For this particular seal, it came down to either an old fashioned telephone, or this Star Trek icon. Somehow the old phone just didn't get across the idea of "optimization".