It is August and Minneapolis, Minn., is readying itself for the annual gathering for the APCO show. However, this year, the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) show will be much different as the promise of broadband for public safety is now within sight! But before we start the sprint to the finish line, we still have some hurdles left to overcome:

We will hear how systems integrators are developing business models that help limit the OPEX costs for the networks and bring the critical technical LTE skills to the party.

With very difficult financial limitations, innovation and teamwork will be required to make this network work. Look for vendors that bring new ideas to the game that help address these monetary challenges. How do we help limit CAPEX and OPEX while still offering the outstanding reliability/performance required of a mission critical network?

Aviat Networks knows backhaul will play a much larger role in the financial measures of the broadband network (perhaps as much as 30 percent of CAPEX)! Our solutions take advantage of existing deployed backhaul radios in public safety networks (more than 18,000 radios deployed in state/local networks today) and those of our competitors (estimated in excess of 30,000 radios). “Reuse—whenever possible” must be part of every conversation.

In addition, Aviat Networks’ ProVision monitoring/management platform and NOC Managed Services allow the state/local entity to much more cost effectively maintain their networks…to mission-critical standards. OPEX savings of more than 25 percent may be achieved by being able to predict problems before they occur and to be able to quickly diagnose and address them when they do occur. IP networks involve more complex failure mechanisms than TDM networks. Aviat Networks’ Advanced NOC Services capability offers the IP insight needed to fully understand loading, demand changes, networking issues quickly and avert bottlenecks before they occur.

If you would like to hear more on any of these topics, I invite you to come and see us at APCO.

Randy Jenkins Director Business Development Aviat Networks

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In an all-indoor configuration, Aviat Networks’ Eclipse Packet Node platform has delivered flexibility to Tooele County, Utah, to transition its partially mountainous, rural legacy TDM network to IP when the traffic demands it. When greater functionality is required, the modular nature of the platform is called upon to ease installation and maintenance.

“The entire design is highly modular, and we are able to drop in new network cards with the latest technology. We just swap new cards for old,” says Dave Williams, communications manager for Tooele County. “So not only does Eclipse Packet Node provide native TDM support for our latency-sensitive, mission-critical traffic today but also allows us the flexibility to migrate to native all-IP traffic as our applications evolve. With this platform, we get the best of both worlds.”