Page 1 2 3 Page 1 2 3 | FRIDAY - MARCH 10, 2006 - ISSUE NO. 203 |
Dear friends of Wireless Messaging, I am very pleased to report "mission accomplished!" The charge of the Paging Cavalry into Jackson, Mississippi on Monday of this week to testify to to the Hurricane Katrina Independent Panel—in my view—was a great success. While we cannot control what the panel will do with the information presented to them, it is comforting to know that the advantages of paging technology were skillfully presented by two of our industry's "commanding generals." Bruce Deer, president of the AAPC and SkyTel, and Vince Kelly, president of USA Mobility both did an excellent job with their presentations. Summaries of their testimonies follow. Bruce Deer's is on page one and Vince Kelly's is on page two. Being there, and hearing them, made me proud to be a part of the Wireless Messaging community. This was not just another routine meeting, but was a major production at the Jackson State University "e-Center" with several television cameras, many reporters, government officials, and the senior managers of many different companies. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, panel chair Nancy Victory, FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, U.S. Congressman Chip Pickering, (R-Miss.) and many other luminaries were in attendance. Continuing the analogy of the "Charge of the Cavalry" I have modified one of the photos that I took, giving the two "generals" old fashioned Army Officer's hats. Although our cause is very serious, a little humor doesn't hurt anything. This photo follows immediately below. Other photos are included throughout the three pages of this newsletter. They turned out well, partly because of the good lighting for the television cameras, and partly because I have a new digital camera. There is a lot of interest in how this all might affect the paging industry. Please let me know what you think. Now on to more news and views. |
A new issue of The Wireless Messaging Newsletter gets posted on the web each week. A notification goes out by e-mail to subscribers on most Fridays around noon central US time. The notification message has a link to the actual newsletter on the Internet. That way it doesn't fill up your incoming e-mail account. There is no charge for subscription and there are no membership restrictions. Readers are a very select group of wireless industry professionals, and include the senior managers of many of the world's major Paging and Wireless Data companies. There is an even mix of operations managers, marketing people, and engineers—so I try to include items of interest to all three groups. It's all about staying up-to-date with business trends and technology. I regularly get reader's comments, so this newsletter has become a community forum for the Paging, and Wireless Data communities. You are welcome to contribute your ideas and opinions. Unless otherwise requested, all correspondence addressed to me is subject to publication in the newsletter and on my web site. I am very careful to protect the anonymity of those who request it. NOTE: This newsletter is best viewed at screen resolutions of 800x600 (good) or 1024x768 (better). Any current revision of web browser should work fine. Please notify me of any problems with viewing. This site is compliant with XHTML 1.0 transitional coding for easy access from wireless devices. (XML 1.0/ISO 8859-1.)
MORE PAGES | |||||||||||
The Paging Commanding Generals
| AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF PAGING CARRIERS |
| ||||||||||||
| AAPC BULLETIN | ||||||||||||
| FEATURED ADVERTISERS SUPPORTING THE NEWSLETTER |
AQUIS COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
Engineering Services
Special Projects
Expense Reduction Services
|
| ||||||||
Wireless Messaging Software
|
Newsletter repair prices—starting at:
**Special pricing on cellular and pager refurbishment**
Ask for Special Newsletter Pricing. Please call: (800) 222-6075 ext. 306 for pricing.
|
Advertise Here
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DON’T WAIT FOR THE NEXT SATELLITE OUTAGE Allow us to uplink your paging data to two separate satellites for complete redundancy! CVC owns and operates two separate earth stations and specializes in uplink services for paging carriers. Join our list of satisfied uplink customers.
For inquires please call or e-mail Stephan Suker at 800-696-6474 or steves@cvcpaging.com |
Want to help the newsletter? Become a SPONSOR
|
When every second counts, manage them effectively. Messaging Business Opportunity Supplement your existing business by launching this new AssistSTAR message distribution management system. Increase your revenue without purchasing a lot of new infrastructure, by starting out with a subscription service on existing equipment. What is AssistSTAR? Subscription-based AssistSTAR to start Server-based solutions when you are ready Time-critical response When every second counts, manage them effectively. You are invited to view our emerging case study presentation by clicking here.
|
Too much to list. See complete list at:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| WIRELESS MESSAGING NEWS |
Posted on Tue, Mar. 07, 2006
Can you hear me now? Bad!
Communications also a catastrophe
By ANITA LEE
calee@sunherald.com
JACKSON—What we had here, with Katrina, was a failure to communicate.
An independent panel created by the Federal Communications Commission to study problems before, during and after the storm held its second meeting at Jackson State University's e-Center on Monday and today. The panel has local and state emergency leaders from Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama and communications industry and media officials. The panel will present its findings and recommend solutions to the FCC by June 15.
Dead police radios, cell phones, satellite phones, batteries and land lines; inability to communicate with each other and with state government and Washington for many days - emergency response leaders from Mississippi and neighboring states shared similar stories on Monday.
 |
|
| Chip Pickering | Kevin Martin |
U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss., who attended the meeting, said a fix for communication breakdowns is overdue and should have been done when major problems were spotted after 9/11. Pickering, who serves on the House Select Committee on Katrina and the committee that oversees the FCC, said that local governments and industry must play a role, but that much of the burden of finding solutions, and funding, rests on the federal government.
"If we don't (solve problems) before next hurricane season, then shame on us," Pickering said. "We lost lives and had prolonged suffering because we lost the ability to communicate and coordinate and as a result saw the loss of command and control."
Pickering said military involvement in solutions is likely.
"They have some resources, such as high-altitude balloons with cellular towers on them run by batteries that could provide temporary help," he said.
Pickering said federal work won't and shouldn't supplant pending state and local efforts to purchase interoperable communications systems, but that the federal government should help with planning and money. He said that so far, private companies haven't been too willing to cooperate because of competition in their industry, and that the federal government could perhaps force cooperation.
Steve Delahousey with American Medical Response, chairman of the Harrison County 911 commission, is chairman of the FCC panel's Public Safety Emergency Communications subcommittee. He said Harrison County's relatively new, $15 million communication system worked "about 100 percent" after Katrina, but only locally. Emergency responders couldn't communicate with Jackson or Washington.
"But one thing we discovered, we didn't have enough radios," Delahousey said. "Our infrastructure was fine, but there were not enough radios. We need them stockpiled, prepositioned in warehouses, enough so we can hand them out to the state police from Florida who came to help, or those from North Carolina."
Delahousey said another problem was that the state-federal Emergency Alert System didn't fully work. He said there was confusion on how to get information out to radio stations over the EAS, that no one appeared to be in charge of that operation.
While the meeting Monday was focused on emergency communications, panel members also offered a few general recriminations on federal and media response to Katrina.
"This nation has a plethora of politicians and bureaucracy and a paucity of leadership," said Juliette M. Saussy, director of Emergency Medical Services for New Orleans, who said communications systems there failed totally, to the point police could not even radio each other.
Hu Meena, president of Cellular South, lamented, "To the extent Mississippi is ever mentioned at all (in relation to Katrina) it's usually just an add-on paragraph."
Saussy responded, "We in New Orleans don't minimize what happened in Mississippi, but share your plight, no matter how the press plays it." But then moments later she referred to her "experiences at ground zero, New Orleans" in the storm that made direct landfall in Mississippi.
Source: SunHerald.com
Photos: by Brad Dye
FCC chief, others struggle to solve storm communication problems
3/6/2006, 1:55 p.m. CT
By HOLBROOK MOHR
The Associated Press
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A lack of reliable communications during and after Hurricane Katrina left emergency responders confused and isolated, experts told federal regulators on Monday.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said 3 million telephone lines were knocked out by the violent storm that rolled ashore Aug. 29.
In states hit by Katrina — primarily, Louisiana and Mississippi — he said at least 38 911 call centers went down, more than 1,000 cellular towers were out of service. He said as many as 20,000 calls failed to go through the day after the storm, and about 100 TV and radio stations were knocked off the air.
"As a result of all of these complications, hundreds of thousands of people were unable to receive news and emergency information, contact first responders or communicate with their loved ones," he said. "Emergency workers and public safety officials also had difficulty communicating and coordinating with one another."
Martin was in Jackson with an independent panel to gather information that will be presented to the FCC in June.
The FCC chairman hopes the panel can gather information to be used to strengthen communications throughout the nation and especially in areas vulnerable to natural disasters.
"This a unique endeavor, the independent panel brings together experts from all of the sectors of the communication industry and experts from public safety organizations," Martin said. "The panel will review the efficiency of the recovery effort ... and make recommendations to the commission on ways we can improve disaster preparedness, network reliability and resiliency and communication among first responders."
Harlin McEwen, chairman of the Communications and Technology Committee of the International Association of Police Chiefs, said Katrina's destruction was overwhelming.
"Usually, what happens is you have other resources surrounding where the incident occurred to come to the aid of those that are in need," he said. "When you have an issue like Katrina, that affects three states and where much of the public safety infrastructure was wiped out ... that's a different issue."
Keith Parker, director of the National Association of Emergency Medical Service Officials, said the Mississippi Department of Health could not contact local EMS agencies during the storm.
"The lack of communication created times of confusion and chaos. It took longer to provide the services needed to the communities devastated by the hurricane because all the right people could not communicate effectively," he said. "There will always be catastrophic events, the question is will we be better prepared for the next one."
Julliette Saussy, director of Emergency Medical Service of New Orleans, said communication systems eroded in that city as the waters rose from massive levee breaches.
"Surrounded by water and stranded ourselves, our worst fears were realized," she said. "We had no way to communicate except by line of sight. Our radios were not operable, most land lines and cell phones were useless and or communications centers were under water. When help arrived we could not communicate with them either."
George Sholl, the 911 director for Jackson County, Miss., said there was not a complete failure of communications in his hard hit county that borders Alabama, but many first responders lacked training in using backup systems such as satellite phones.
Source: NOLA.com
 Bruce Deer, AAPC President, SkyTel President, testifies to the Hurricane Katrina Independent Panel in Jackson Mississippi. (03/06/06) |
First Responder and Emergency Communications
The critical link provided by paging service to first responders in crisis environments, when voice communication networks are overloaded or otherwise fail, has been repeatedly acknowledged by independent observers.
The Arlington County After-Action Report on the Response to the September 11 Terrorist Attack on the Pentagon (the “AAR”) contained the following:
Most recently, a communications specialist deployed by FEMA in Urban Search and Rescue in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, wrote to the Wireless Messaging Newsletter when “the cell and data service down and systems being flooded,” that “ReFLEX [two-way paging] is working fine and communications are flowing through the units! . . . Again the critical use of the ReFLEX in . . . all the disaster situations I have been to (9/11 NYC, Ivan, Isabel and now Katrina!)” (http://braddye.com/newsletters/n2sep2005.html#blumeyer).
Dr. Peter Kapsales, senior consulting engineer for CACI Technologies, also has acknowledged the benefits of two-way paging for crisis communications in a March 2004 article entitled “Wireless Messaging for Homeland Security” (http://braddye.com/homeland_security.html). He concluded that two-way paging “is more reliable and more effective than the current voice networks used by emergency workers and public employees who respond to critical situations” and “should be considered a primary or backup system to improve real-time communication among emergency personnel during critical periods when voice communication is not practical or fails.”
Why is paging the BEST technology to use when it is necessary to alert many in a short time?
Source: Bruce Deer (This is the "essence" of his testimony to the Hurricane Katrina Panel.)
Photo: by Brad Dye
| FEATURED ADVERTISERS SUPPORTING THE NEWSLETTER |
WIRELESS REBOOTING SOLUTIONS WISP NETWORKS • DIGITAL CAMERAS & SINAGE INFORMATION KIOSKS • CO-LOCATION FACILITIES
NOW YOU CAN DO THE LEGWORK OF AN ENTIRE WORKFORCE . . . IN AN INSTANT. Put the innovative technology of Nighthawk to work for you. For more information on any of our products or services, please contact us. Nighthawk Systems, Inc. Phone: 877-764-4484 |
GTES has recently made the strategic decision to expanding its development activities to include wireless location technologies; a market that researchers forecast could reach $3.6 billion by 2010. In support of this new strategic direction, GTES has developed SHERLOC™ a complete one-stop wireless location service, providing the flexibility of being protocol neutral and network agnostic. Targeted at business customers who need to track their high-value shipments or better manage their service or delivery fleets, SHERLOC™ is a hosted application that combines configuration flexibility with ease of use. GTES is offering SHERLOC™ services both directly and through authorized resellers. If your company has an interest in finding out how location services can enhance your revenue stream, and has the contacts and expertise to make you successful in the location marketplace, please contact us for further information at www.sherlocgps.com and select “Reseller Opportunities,” or call us at 770-754-1666 for more information. www.gtesinc.com GTES is the only Glenayre authorized software support provider in the Paging industry. With over 200 years of combined experience in Glenayre hardware and software support, GTES offers the industry the most professional support and engineering development staff available. Continued Support Programs CALL US TODAY FOR YOUR SUPPORT NEEDS
|
Wireless Communication Solutions
|
|
| |||||||||||
The Paging Industry expects quality, reliable, and high performance paging products. We at Unication have listened and delivered.
About Unication Co., Ltd.
|
 Prism Message Gateway Systems Your Choice of Options
Popular Choice for Domestic and International
Logical Choice
Go ahead . . . be choosy . . . choose Prism Systems International
Streaming Video from the |
March 7, 2006 FCC panel studies disaster plans By Jack Mazurak
When Hurricane Katrina started ripping apart radio transmission equipment in coastal Jackson County, the emergency radio system switched to Fail Soft, a limp-along mode that allows some limited communication. "But many of our users had never used it and when they turned on their radios, the first word they saw was 'fail,' so that created a lot more uncertainty," said George Sholl, Jackson County Emergency Management director. Anecdotes about lack of training, fail-safe system breakdowns and technology problems peppered the testimony communications industry professionals gave Monday to a federally appointed panel investigating Hurricane Katrina's effects on emergency networks. Sholl, one of the professionals who testified, said if emergency managers learned anything from Katrina, it's the need for training. And if the federal government is going to help, he said, it should emphasize disaster planning. The panel, assembled in January by the Federal Communications Commission, is made up of 26 professionals from law enforcement, emergency management, radio and telecommunications companies. It's charged with putting together a comprehensive report about how to avoid emergency communications system breakdowns in the future. Better communications systems will keep loved ones in touch in emergencies and help first responders save lives, said FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. Some of the most pointed testimony came from Dr. Juliette Saussy, director of New Orleans Emergency Medical Services. She watched as water flooded the city's communications centers, one after another, until the entire 911 system was essentially gone. "We must have a redundancy. When one system fails, we need to have backups in place," she said. "We must have a common (technological) language. We must have plans in place and they must be functional and followed. We must be willing to exercise those plans. All this talk of 700 and 800 MHz systems - just pick one." Asked by one of the panelists if the Gulf Coast would survive another monster hurricane, Saussy said that's not the issue. "The question isn't will we survive - we came through this one, I think we could do it again - but can we do anything better? The answer is no because nothing has changed," she said. The panel's inquiry comes as Mississippi officials are in the first steps of building a statewide radio system that could link fire, police and medical responders together in a more orderly and effective way. The state doesn't expect to begin building it until January, and the estimated $250 million project could take years to complete. But emergency responders don't rely just on radio systems. They also can use cellular and land-line phones, Blackberries, traditional e-mail, text messages, satellite phones and Ham radio. The infrastructure for those systems also could use some fortification. Each system has its drawbacks and, as Saussy put it, "anything worth having has a price tag." The communication professionals testified some systems stayed up during the storm, and some crashed. Some were crippled by human error and lack of power, and some usable systems gathered dust because nobody knew how to operate them. On the federal government's end, Saussy suggested the FCC appoint one communications guru to each state who would act as a one-point conduit to all federal agencies during a disaster. "We didn't know who could talk to whom and what guy in what uniform could talk to whom," she said. "These would have to be qualified people, and we'd have to get to know each other so that the first time I talk to somebody is not when I'm standing in 10 feet of water." Harlin McEwen, chairman of the International Association of Chiefs of Police Communications and Technology Committee, told the panel systems must be built to withstand prolonged power outages. Battery back-ups don't last more than a few days, he said. Propane supplies for generators can run dry when roads are blocked, and gasoline can't be pumped when the electricity is out. Others testified the government should help with standardization of radio system interoperability and that it should purchase mobile communications systems that can be trucked into disaster areas. Panel Chairwoman Nancy Victory said subcommittees have been working on various communication system issues including resiliency and recovery procedures. The panel must wrap up its inquiry by June 15 and submit its findings report to the FCC. Asked how likely those findings are to be translated into national policy, Victory said it's Martin's decision. "The chairman did identify this committee as a need early on. Based on the tremendous support he's given, he is taking it seriously," she said. Source: ClarionLedger.com |
News, opinions, opportunities, and products to help your business grow. |
CLICK HERE 
CLICK HERE 
