Just as the USB standard lets you connect a PC to different hardware devices, Project Safecom officials expect the P-25 standard to let different narrowband radios work with one another.
By October, the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials is expected to approve the first complete set of standards to promote the development of wireless communication devices that can interoperate regardless of manufacturer.
“This moves us forward a lot,” said David Boyd, manager for Project Safecom, which is one of the 25 Office of Management and Budget e-government projects and one of two initiatives managed by the Homeland Security Department.
Open standards
“No single standard was complete enough to cover all the elements or ... open enough to avoid problems with proprietary interfaces or protocols,” he said. “This will give us a set of open standards that says what the signal should look like, so everyone can decode it. It will work like the Internet does.”
P-25 received a boost over the past year from DHS and other federal agencies including the National Institute of Standards and Technology. DHS provided funding, while NIST is developing interoperabilty testing standards.
Craig Jorgensen, project director for Project 25, said NIST’s standards would let vendors create commercial test labs for equipment to ensure products can talk to each other.
Jorgensen said the project team was working closely with DHS and other federal agencies. “The standards process can be lethargic, and progress becomes difficult. But through our relationship with DHS, NIST and others, we will have something to get us started.”
He said P-25 would offer backward compatibility for older radio systems.
“If there is a hurricane in Florida, emergency workers from Utah can go there and their radios would work,” Jorgensen said. “The real payoff still is years away, but states are aware of it, and as they upgrade their systems they will buy systems that meet the standards.”
Along with P-25, Boyd said the Safecom project team worked with Virginia to develop a statewide communications interoperability planning guide. Now Kentucky and Nevada are doing the same thing in two other DHS-sponsored pilots.
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