I always wanted to be a firefighter. I didn’t become one because I was born about 10 years too early. No one in my family ever had attended college, and my blue-collar parents believed that a college degree was the key that would open the door to a better life. They insisted that I be the first. Unfortunately, few — if any — colleges at the time offered fire service — oriented curricula. So, I became a journalist. But the dream still lingers within, like a faintly glowing ember.

Given that, it should come as no surprise that I jumped at the chance to participate in firefighter training at the University of Illinois a few weeks ago. Each year, Motorola brings product managers, marketers and design engineers to the training facility. The belief is that product design shouldn’t be conducted in an ivory tower; ergo, the opportunity to experience what firefighters experience, albeit in a controlled environment, will provide valuable insights that will help them to develop products that are more effective in the field.

That’s quite important, said lead instructor Mark Krizik — a Motorola systems engineer who doubles as a lieutenant with the fire department in the Chicago suburb of Posen, Ill. — as there’s just too much to deal with when on the fireground. Equipment must be donned, breathing gear must be working properly, instructions have to be understood and myriad hazards must be avoided — for instance, it’s generally not a good idea to fall through a floor, especially if it means landing in the basement where the blaze started — a common occurrence, I was told, as basements generally are where heat-generating devices such as furnaces and clothes dryers are located. Then there’s the weighty matter of knocking down the fire and rescuing victims.

“The radio is the last thing a firefighter wants to think about,” Krizik said.

After an initial orientation, we were divided into teams and issued gear, including helmets, air tank and mask, turnout coat and gloves — everything but the pants and boots. Then we were put through the paces, replicating over several hours the duties of an engine company, a ladder company and incident command. After one of our rotations, I overheard one of my teammates, a Motorola marketing manager, tell a colleague, “I had to take off my gloves in order to use the lapel mike.” She added that the experience was an eye-opener, as she discovered that using the lapel microphone while wearing heavy gloves was much tougher to do than she had thought.

The day was filled with other similar revelations. The Motorola people learned a great deal about the rigors of firefighting and how those rigors affect how firefighters use their products — what works and what doesn’t. And I learned a little something about Motorola.

Imagine that you’re the lead rescue planner for an event that has attracted more than 100,000 people. Then imagine that, sometime during that event, sensors indicate a possible anthrax contamination. That’s exactly the situation Tom Shannon, the current chief of the Salt Lake City Fire Department, found himself in nearly two years ago.

At the time, Shannon was the assistant fire chief for the city of Glendale, Ariz., which was hosting the Super Bowl in February 2008. Shannon was the liaison to the NFL, was responsible for credentialing and tracking hundreds of firefighters and emergency medical technicians, and was tasked with ensuring that those first responders performed in compliance with the National Incident Management System.

I recently spoke with Shannon about how mobile-data devices and applications are being used effectively by public safety during large-scale events and incidents.

Midway through the first half of the Super Bowl, an air-monitoring system indicated the presence of anthrax. At halftime, another positive indication occurred. There were 80,000 people inside the stadium and another 30,000 or so milling outside the building. So, the decision to execute a mass evacuation was no light matter.

“Before you pull that trigger … you need to authenticate all the data you’re getting,” Shannon said. “You need to ask, ‘Is this real, is this real, is this real?’”

Fortunately, it was learned that the air-monitoring system had indicated a false positive, so no one inside or outside the stadium was at risk. The key to it all was the ability to check other sources via the mobile-data system and share that data across myriad agencies. “That was huge. We were able to put off what really could have been a pretty sizeable event of mass prophylaxis,” Shannon said.

With all due respect to the chief, I think they put off an evacuation that would have resulted in mass chaos, not just in the greater Phoenix area, but across the country. Can you imagine having to evacuate 110,000 people? And can you imagine the strain on the communications infrastructure, both commercial and public safety, if such an event had occurred?

More chilling is what might have transpired if the mobile-data system had not been in place. In such a scenario, there would have been no way to quickly determine whether the reading was real. If the threat was a hoax, that could have resulted in an unnecessary evacuation that would have put tens of thousands at risk of injury. Worse, if the threat proved to be real, the necessary evacuation could have been delayed, risking hundreds or thousands more taking ill or dying.

Roughly a dozen years ago, I was involved in a very nasty car accident. A knucklehead tried to race through the intersection two blocks from my home before the light turned red. He badly mistimed the effort and slammed into the front passenger side of my vehicle, which had just crossed into the intersection. My car was beyond totaled; the impact bent the frame into a V-shape, according to my insurance adjustor. Worse, my son’s head was split open through his eyebrow — like a melon hammered by a mallet — because it collided with the airbag at the wrong angle. The wound required 60 stitches, artfully applied by a plastic surgeon, to close.

I thought about that incident for the first time in a very long time after participating in a webinar a couple of weeks ago on mobile broadband data for first responders. The wide-ranging discussion eventually found its way to the proposed nationwide broadband network for first responders that would operate in the 700-MHz band. Panelists Steve Jennings, the chief information officer for Harris County, Texas — in which Houston is located — and Jon Fullinwider, the chief information officer (retired) for Los Angeles County, both spoke of the wondrous new capabilities that this network could spawn.

That’s what got me thinking about the crash. I started to contemplate how such a network might have helped my son had his very serious injury been life-threatening. In such a circumstance, would his treatment have been aided had the emergency medical technicians been able to transmit photos of his wound to emergency-room doctors? Would those doctors have been better able to monitor his condition if a medical telemetry system had been in place?

Both Jennings and Fullinwider believe the federal government needs to step up to the plate to get this network built, as has been suggested by Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility — the nation’s two largest wireless operators. Both carriers are calling for a separate stimulus package to underwrite the cost of the buildout, which largely would leverage existing commercial infrastructure in a network-of-networks approach.

“If this is a national imperative, the feds are going to have to throw some money at this,” Fullinwider said.

What they throw the money at is an equally important consideration, according to Jennings. “They need to fund a national infrastructure,” he said. “It’s a blatant waste of money for the feds to build their own systems independent of state and local systems. At a major incident, the feds can’t communicate with the state, the state can’t communicate with the locals, and the locals can’t communicate with other locals. It just doesn’t make good sense.”

When I asked whether it would be folly should this network never be built, both panelist answered — virtually in unison — “absolutely.”

As the victim of a horrific car accident, I couldn’t agree more. And, as a taxpayer, I’d be perfectly happy if the feds threw some of my hard-earned cash at an initiative that indeed should be a national imperative.

What do you think? Tell us in the comment box below.

My family moved when I was in the third grade — and I was devastated. The thought of leaving all of my friends was crushing. Though we were only moving seven miles, it might as well have been to the other side of the planet. I was dead set against it — which only goes to prove that 8-year-olds shouldn’t be allowed to make major decisions.

As things turned out, the move was the best thing that ever happened to me. I made new friends — such good friends that we still get together on a regular basis more than four decades later. The house my parents bought was a block from a giant park, a special place in which I spent most of the next 15 years. In fact, I visit the old neighborhood regularly, if only to buy pizzas from two sisters whose father regularly sold pies to my parents 40 years ago.

I was brought back in time by something said by Jim Vlassopoulos, the deputy chief of Washington, D.C., Fire and EMS, during yesterday’s National Conference on Emergency Communications in Chicago, which is being presented by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Emergency Communications (OEC). Vlassopoulos told the roughly 400 attendees that they needed to “get outside the sandbox,” and advised that “local fiefdoms” — which have plagued the effort to achieve interoperable communications for years — should be avoided in the future because they make it difficult to institute change.

These are concepts that many, if not most, people find uncomfortable. It’s scary outside the sandbox. Change is frightening. Few things are as terrifying as the unknown, which is the first place that change takes us. But as the old saying goes, if you do what you’ve always done, you’re going to get what you always got. The worst reason to do anything is because that’s the way it’s always been done.

OEC Director Chris Essid apparently agrees with this notion, saying yesterday that the status quo in public-safety communications needs to change if the goals of the National Emergency Communications Plan — which was mandated by the Homeland Security Act of 2002 — are to be met.

From my perch, change is a friend, not a foe. It is something to be embraced, not shunned. It’s what keeps us moving forward. And, as I discovered a long time ago, when you finally muster the courage to crawl out onto the limb, you sometimes discover the best pizza in the world. Or, as Chicago Fire Department Commander Len Edling said yesterday in his closing remarks, sometimes you discover someone who already has the wheel you’re trying to invent.

What do you think? Tell us in the comment box below.

Do you remember the old television commercials for the financial advice firm EF Hutton, which had as a tag line, “When EF Hutton talks, everyone listens”? A more contemporary twist on that tag line would be, “When the nation’s largest wireless operator outlines a plan for the proposed nationwide broadband communications network for first responders, everyone in Washington should pay attention.”

Yesterday at the International Wireless Communications Exposition, keynote speaker Steve Zipperstein, Verizon Wireless‘ vice president of legal affairs and general counsel, outlined a plan for the network that would give the 10 MHz of airwaves in the 700-MHz band, the so-called D Block, to public safety, rather than auction it to commercial operators. The spectrum would be allocated in the form of local, regional and state licenses. This is an interesting about-face. Recall that the wireless carriers, led by their lobbying group, the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, were adamantly against giving the D Block to first responders when the notion of this network first was floated three years ago at IWCE by Cyren Call’s Morgan O’Brien.

Under Verizon Wireless plan, agencies would figure out their individual needs and then contract with commercial operators through a bid process to build out the network, leveraging existing infrastructure, which would save considerable time and money, Zipperstein said. He noted that some estimates put the cost of building such a network from scratch at $60 billion or more.

The result would be a network of networks that would leverage IP technology to enable interoperable communications when major incidents requiring a multi-jurisdictional response occur. Also, public safety would have enough spectrum to meet its broadband needs, and have local and/or regional control over the airwaves.

Here’s the best part: Verizon Wireless wants the taxpayers to foot the bill. Zipperstein called on Congress to create a stand-alone stimulus bill dedicated to public safety interoperable broadband communications. He said that interoperable communications should no longer be treated as “some adjunct project,” but rather as a national security imperative, on the same level as “procuring aircraft carriers and fighter jets.”

I couldn’t agree more with this position. I have written at several junctures that the federal government should be looking at this network as it did the interstate highway system a half century ago. Of course, the difference between now and then is that today much of the highway already has been built, which is a huge advantage. Congress has proved that it can find money for initiatives when it wants to, even in a very tough economy. It needs to make this network a priority and fund it accordingly.

An important aspect of this plan is that the company, which authored it, wield incredible lobbying power on Capitol Hill. Harlin McEwen, the chairman of the Public Safety Spectrum Trust, which currently holds public safety’s 10 MHz of broadband airwaves in the 700-MHz band, asked during the keynote session whether the first responder sector could count Verizon Wireless and its lobbyists to be supportive should it embrace this new approach and lobby for it in Washington. Zipperstein didn’t hesitate in saying yes.

The underlying message delivered yesterday by the most powerful force in the commercial wireless sector is this: “If you want this network to become reality, here’s how to get it done.” It’s a message that public safety, as well as federal lawmakers and policy-makers, need to hear, loud and clear.

What do you think? Tell us in the comment box below.

There is no shortage of watershed events in U.S. history, events that changed the course of history. Two that come immediately to mind are Colonel Jimmy Doolittle’s daring bombing raid on Tokyo, which shifted momentum to the U.S. in the Pacific during World War II, and President John F. Kennedy’s declaration in 1961 that America would place a man on the moon before the end of the decade, which delivered a sharp blow to the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The common denominator between these events is that in both cases the conventional wisdom was that it couldn’t be done. In Doolittle’s case, bombers had never before flown the distance they would have to fly to bomb Japan, more than 2000 miles. Also, none of the raiders had ever launched from an aircraft carrier before. In Kennedy’s case, America was well behind the Soviets in the space race; in fact, nine months would pass after the president’s declaration before the U.S. put its first astronaut into orbit.

Despite all of this, both of these previously unthinkable events not only occurred, but they did so with stunning impact. It makes me wonder whether another seemingly unthinkable event might one day be possible: satellite technology providing the basis for public-safety communications.

Imagine the impact that would have: no more terrestrial infrastructure to build and maintain; no more network outages because infrastructure has been rendered inoperable by natural or man-made disasters; and, perhaps, drastically reduced coverage and interference issues.

Of course, there are limitations inherent to satellite communications in their present form that preclude their use for mission-critical communications. For example, weather can wreak havoc with satellite signals, the so-called rain fade phenomenon. It’s the reason many people continue to get their TV service from more-expensive cable providers rather than the satellite providers.

However, satellite technology providers are finding solutions to weather-related interference, according to George Choquette, senior vice president of engineering for Hughes Network Systems. Choquette said Hughes can control how much downlink power its satellites transmit on a spot-beam basis to overcome the effects of weather.

“We get radar data from the National Weather Service and other sources, and when weather comes into an area, we step up the transmit power,” he said. “It’s pretty cool. Now, when the 30,000-foot thunder cloud comes in and it’s hailing, [communications cease]. But you can effectively use this technique with much more severe storms than any conventional satellite system.”

Latency and jitter are taboos in public-safety voice and video communications. But Hughes has addressed the latter, according to Choquette, by engineering into its system both constant-rate and on-demand bandwidth. “The satellite keeps track of how many of the connections are active at any particular time, and gives out slot-by-slot, packet-by-packet bandwidth to these terminals to service them,” he said.

In other words, the satellite can be programmed from the ground to allocate necessary bandwidth to public-safety terminals, essentially taking it from the general commercial pool when needed. “Not only is each terminal a router, the satellite is a router,” Choquette said.

Given the pace of technology evolution, it seems reasonable to think that the satellite technology developers will figure out a way to address other shortcomings, such as the fact satellite signals don’t penetrate buildings particularly well, which would be of utmost concern to first responders, particularly firefighters.

Hughes, SkyTerra (formerly Mobile Satellite Ventures) and TerraStar have launched, or will soon launch, giant satellites—“birds,” as they are known in the industry—that will allow form factors for satellite communications antennas and devices on the ground to shrink. Given that, let’s say, hypothetically, that these smaller-form-factor antennas are placed in every apparatus a fire department has. Would it be too far-fetched to think that, in the future, satellite communications from a remote command post or a dispatch center could be received by these in-vehicle satellite antennas, relayed through a gateway to an in-vehicle land mobile radio system that would then transmit the signal to firefighters on a peer-to-peer basis or via an in-building system?

I’m not an engineer, and I’m sure that some of our readers who are will scoff at this suggestion. But before you say it can’t be done, think back to Doolittle and Kennedy. And then think back to a decade ago. Did anyone 10 years ago think that IP-based communications ever would be used in the public-safety sector, for any reason? Or that satellite handsets one day would be in form factors similar to today’s cellular handsets and PDAs? Talk about the unthinkable.

What do you think? Tell us in the comment box below.

Who doesn’t read Consumer Reports now and then? I do any time I’m faced with a major purchasing decision. There is comfort when one is planning to shell out hundreds — perhaps thousands — of dollars on an item in knowing whether the device is going to perform as advertised, meet one’s needs and provide equal or better value to the dollars being spent. The publication’s staff experts provide a certain level of such comfort when they independently determine whether a product is what it is supposed to be. Soon, it appears, those who purchase public safety communications equipment will be able to find similar comfort concerning Project 25 radios.

Last week, Urgent Communications Senior Writer Donny Jackson and I visited Motorola’s headquarters campus in the Chicago suburbs for a demonstration of public-safety P25 Phase 1 trunking interoperability. EFJohnson Technologies, Tait Radio Communications, Tyco Electronics M/A-COM and Technisonic Industries also participated. Besides us, the demo — which culminated a week of testing in Motorola’s lab — was witnessed by several public safety customers and consultants.

Everything worked just as it should have during the demo. That was expected — they didn’t drag us out there to showcase the failures. Being curious sorts, however, we wanted to have an idea of what went on behind the curtain and asked a Motorola representative to identify the radios that passed muster and those that didn’t. After considerable hemming and hawing, we were told that our question would go unanswered for the moment because of nondisclosure agreements but that the results of the tests eventually would be posted online.

We never like it when sources dodge our questions, but what’s truly important here is that the public-safety sector appears to be on the cusp of a new era, one in which those making purchasing decisions will have much-needed documentation regarding which radios truly are P25-compliant, so they can make more-informed choices.

The Motorola lab is awaiting recognition from the Department of Homeland Security, which has established the methods for P25 compliance testing. Other vendor labs will be launched soon. For instance, M/A-COM plans to conduct tests at its Lynchburg, Va., facility in the near future that will be similar to those conducted last week at Motorola. The plan is that all P25 vendor test labs will have DHS recognition by the end of April.

Some will wonder why this took so long, a reasonable question. We wondered that ourselves, and were told that the process to create a compliance assessment program, or CAP, started roughly three years ago, and that it’s quite the effort to get everyone — vendors, the DHS and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which also had a major role — on the same page. Given how long it has taken P25 to evolve into its current state, the three-year gestation period for the CAP doesn’t really seem all that long.

Regardless of the timing, this is a very positive development for the public safety community. One can never have too much information when one is making important decisions. This is especially true when those decisions require the spending of considerable amounts of money.

What do you think? Tell us in the comment box below.

All of us like to think we are selfless, as there is nobility in putting the interests of others ahead of one’s own. In large measure, selflessness is what makes us human.

When an act of selflessness is borne of higher purpose, it becomes conspicuous. Take Pat Tillman for instance. Tillman was a defensive back of some renown with the Arizona Cardinals, being paid millions of dollars to play a game he loved. His was a lifestyle that millions of men dream about—and he tossed it away to join the Army Rangers. When queried about his decision, he spoke of patriotism and duty, and said he was deeply moved by the events of Sept. 11, 2001. He didn’t seem to be bothered at all by the inherent danger of enlisting in the military at a time of war — danger that was all too real, as Tillman unfortunately was killed in combat.

Tillman’s sacrifice was extraordinary. However, there are others who have performed selfless acts that involved abandoning a comfortable lifestyle to do something more meaningful with their lives. I stumbled into one such person at the APCO Canada conference last month in Ottawa, Ontario. Her name is Lorrie Matthews, a supervisor with Calgary (Alberta) Public Safety Communications.

For 15 years, Matthews was the owner of a successful photo restoration business. Then, one day she woke up “wanting to do something more vital.” Her first instinct was to join the police force, but in the midst of training for that opportunity, Matthews broke her wrist playing soccer, which brought a premature end to that dream. Undeterred, she decided that working as a call-taker in a 911 center might fulfill her goal.

She told me of a call she took one night from a wireless phone. There was no sound coming from the other end, but she could tell that a connection existed. Because Canada’s 911 infrastructure is not as advanced as that found in the United States, the best they could do was identify the cell tower that handled the call. That scant information made the task of locating the caller akin to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Despite the fact she had yet to hear the caller’s voice, Matthews’ instincts told her not give up on the call. “Intuition is what serves me best on this job,” she said. Finally, the caller uttered “Chinaman’s Peak,” a mountain in the Canadian Rockies popular with climbers. Buoyed by this breakthrough, Matthews tried to extract more information, such as whether he had been ascending or descending the mountain, which would help locate the caller or identify his problem.

Then the line went dead.

Fortunately, the man was able to call back shortly after and, incredibly, was transferred to Matthews, one of several call-takers on duty that day. “That’s very rare,” she said. The man told Matthews that he had been descending and had suffered heat stroke. “He only said four or five words — but they were able to find him.”

The experience told Matthews she had made the right lifestyle choice. “This is why I pursued this job.”

Her boss, Curtis Brochu, manager of public safety communications for the city of Calgary, is glad she did. “She’s a shining example of what we need in professional communications officers,” he said.

My dentist always can tell when he hits a nerve — he has to put the drill down and pry me off the ceiling. A similar phenomenon happens in the world of journalism. When we write columns that hit a nerve, our e-mail boxes get inundated with reader responses. This is a good thing. Thoughtful responses from readers help to further educate us — and other readers — and help to keep us on our toes.

Readers offered many thoughtful responses to a column I wrote recently on the alleged problems digital radios are having in high-noise environments such as those found on the fireground. Evidence is mounting that digital radios are unable to distinguish between a firefighter‘s voice and background noise in some circumstances, leading to garbled transmissions that could put firefighters at greater risk. This obviously is reason for concern, but I had cautioned against the knee-jerk reaction of abandoning digital systems, that offer some performance advantages over analog, such as greater spectral efficiency and a stronger signal at the edge of the coverage area.

We shared many of these responses last week and today we share more. They have been edited for length.

“Performance advantages? Can you name any as they relate to the fire service? It‘s almost like you’re saying ‘other than intelligibility, digital radios work great.‘ Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln? In most cases, fire went digital because they were dragged along with police that wanted digital encryption. Contrary to what you read in all of the ads, digital isn‘t better because it‘s digital. Digital is better when it offers the customer something they need. When they don‘t need it, there‘s nothing wrong with analog. The industry needs to stop selling the customers something they don‘t want or need. Fireground radios should go digital right after the hydrants go digital.”

“There is no place for digital on the fireground. None. Not now, not ever. There are NO advantages to digital. None. We have enough trouble with good radio training, good practice, experienced people, and excellent equipment with analog, but we have coping mechanisms to deal with it. Introducing digital will get people killed. It already has, or has contributed to deaths, if even incidentally. Please be aware that we are not Luddites, and we are not opposed to new technologies. But we are opposed to any new technology that introduces problems rather than solves them. We do not have a problem with fireground communications in the analog world. That is the point. We do not need a solution. To be driven to digital by the market is to put us in danger.”

“I participated with NIST in helping to review and provide input to the language included into this report that did identify that using any radio, not just digital, may require a different location or position to be used, in a high-noise environment. Our experience on this issue is that radio use and tactical positions cannot always be selected to optimize the best voice quality. There are many times, as in an enclosed room or near a saw, in which a “mayday” or other information has to be sent from the position the radio is available in. Training is always important in how to properly use a radio, but even with this knowledge, the best tactical positions are not always an option.”

“I’ve been listening to handheld and land mobile radios for 50 years and today‘s digital cell phones and digital (P25) radios sound like crap. To suggest some training will fix what is inherently poor audio quality due to the low sampling rate is just silly. When I first heard a P25 radio demonstrated and read the technical specifications, I expected the emergency services users to shoot it down because they were so hard to understand. That hasn‘t happened, and I still don’t understand why not. Perhaps, as is so often the case, it will take a major loss of life due to radios that can‘t be understood for a groundswell of

resistance to develop. I pray it‘s none of my guys and gals that prove the point.”

“I agree training in proper use is important, but training should not be asked to make up for real technical problems that have technical solutions. Humans have a tendency to speak louder and louder to get their point across or when they are excited and stressed. In a typical radio, it is possible, when full of adrenalin, to reach the compression ceiling where the signal is loud but heavily clipped and garbled. Unfortunately, many digital radios suffer from this problem more than their analog cousins.”

“I have been working in communications for over 30 years, and the shoving of digital radios down the user‘s throat is the last straw. All too often, the manufacturers do not listen to the users before they release a product. If the users have ideas, they might show up in later product. As far as more training to be better users — suffice it to say that the tool should be almost idiot-proof. When you are facing the devil, you don‘t want to have to think, ‘I have to hold the radio in just the right place to make myself heard.‘”

Again, thanks to everyone who weighed in. We appreciate the feedback and love the fact we have such a passionate and engaged readership.

Lately we‘ve been writing about the problems that firefighters are having on the fireground with digital radios, which in some cases have had difficulty distinguishing between a human voice and background noise. Indeed, recent tests conducted by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration indicated that analog systems provided greater audio intelligibility than digital systems in four out of nine environments, including when SCBA masks and personal alert safety systems were in use.

But tests conducted by a radio technician in Florida suggest that the problem isn‘t the digital radios at all, but rather firefighters who haven‘t been trained adequately on how to use them in high-noise environments.

Terry Forehand, systems manager for Nassau County, said he put Motorola‘s XTS series and EFJohnson‘s 5100 ES series to the test in a variety of scenarios designed to replicate conditions on the fireground. Chainsaws were fired up, PASS alarms were triggered and a tunnel collapse was simulated. According to Forehand, the radios performed well. He said a few minor adjustments needed to be made to the Motorola handsets, which included turning off the automatic gain control.

But no adjustments needed to be made to the EFJ radios, which feature the enhanced half rate IMBE vocoder that has been specified for the second phase of the Project 25 standard. Currently, EFJ is the only digital radio vendor using this vocoder.

Forehand was impressed. Right now, the county exclusively uses Motorola radios, but “I would choose to buy the EFJohnson radios based on this testing — they work,” he said.

The real problem according to Forehand is the firefighters. “They need to do more training. We have to get them comfortable with being in noisy environments,” he said.

John Oblak, EFJohnson‘s vice president of standards and regulatory affairs, agreed and said an International Association of Fire Chiefs working group came to a similar conclusion, recommending “common sense” best practices that included talking directly into the microphone, knowing how to hold the microphone in relation to the voice port on the SCBA mask and — when possible — talking on the radio before triggering the PASS alarm.

“This will go a long way to mitigating the problem,” Oblak said.

This writing is not intended to suggest that the NTIA study is off base. Rather, it is intended to offer some additional food for thought. Apparently, some fire departments are considering abandoning their digital systems and going back to analog. Certainly others that have been considering an upgrade might now be putting those plans on hold, perhaps permanently. Given the clear performance advantages of digital technology, such knee-jerk reactions would be unfortunate.