The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council released a...

The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council released a report by its Broadband Working Group on “Public Safety Grade” (PSG) communications for a nationwide public safety broadband network (NPSBN). “This is a huge milestone in our quest to develop requirements for FirstNet,” said Marilyn Ward, NPSTC executive director. “Communications is vital to both public safety field and command personnel during routine, local incidents and even more so during major incidents covering a larger area,” the report said (http://bit.ly/1jLihgq). Public safety’s traditional voice networks “are among the most reliable networks available in the United States,” it said. “Commercial wireless networks are not built to the same standard. The NPSBN must be constructed to meet as many of these PSG requirements as possible.” The report covers environmental considerations, service-level agreements, reliability and resiliency, coverage, push-to-talk, applications, site hardening, installation and NPSBN operations. “Because this report is so comprehensive, the writers recognize that not every best practice can be followed in all cases for all subsystems in the network,” it said. “Designers and operators of the NPSBN should adhere to the vast majority of the recommendations in order for the network to be considered Public Safety Grade.” The report lists 459 network best practices.