David Witkowski, President of Wireless Communications Alliance (WCA)
David suggested that Critical Communications relates to:
- Safety of People or Property
- To a lesser extent: Protect Quality of Life
- Continuity of CommerceContinuity of Government
He said that QoS is a key requirement for crtical communications. Other requirements include: Backup power, physical security, data security, redundancy, prioritization mechanisms. David believes that QoS and the level of security needed can’t be provided by public networks, especially in a shared medium envrionment. Utilities are typically self sufficient and not likely to trust public wireless carriers.
Mr. Witkowski said that Critical Communications Infrastructure should encompass:
- Terminal equipment
- Spectrum (if wireless)
- Concentrators, Hubs, Switches, Repeaters
- Backhaul, Bbackbone, long-line, etc.
- Standards for intra-system connection
David believes that an integrated infrastructure must adhere to established standards, which take a long time to develop. A key point is that: “You can have infrastructure that’s not integrated, but you can’t have integration without infrastructure.”
Land Mobile Radio (LMR) was presented as a case study of interoperability failures during major natural disasters. He cited the APCO Project 25 standard, which was finalized in 1989, but not widely implemented by public safety agencies. Mr. Witkowski stated that many public-safety communications shops aren’t equipped to deploy P25. The sheer scale of deploying “Integrated Critical Communications Infrastructure” (i.e. a nationwide inoperable P25 LMR system) is daunting. As a result, many public safety agencies have out-sourced the work to Motorola. But criticisms abound that Motorola is unfairly monopolizing that business.
The major take away from this analysis was that the interoperability requirements for Smart Grid are an order of magnitude (or more) greater than for LMRs!
In light of the LMR Case Study, several important questions arise:
- Do we have realistic expectations for Smart Grid infrastructure standardization and deployment?
- Given that standards are necessary, how many years will it take to ratify the necessary standards?
- Which technology providers are large enough to execute a massive-scale project?
- What are the likely conflict areas between Big Power and entrepreneurs, and what impact will these have on timeline for standards and deployment?
David said that wireless broadband communications has been useful in public safety response. The D Block of 700MHz spectrum was allocated to public safety agencies for a Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) version of LTE. Motorola Solutions and Verizon Wireless have announced an alliance to build a nationwide public/private LTE network. With this alliance, public safety organizations can get nationwide carrier roaming for expanded coverage, real-time management and control of their LTE devices and site sharing with existing carrier sites for rapid deployment (according to a Motorola Solutions brief).
According to Mr. Witkowski, utilities and public safety have similar needs and they might be able to share broadband spectrum. The bandwidth NOT used for emergency response could be used by utilities for Smart Grid communications.
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