Collaborating on Public Safety Broadband

Recently I had the pleasure of hosting a roundtable in Los Angeles to discuss opportunities for innovation in our proposed nationwide interoperable wireless public safety broadband network, an important component of the President’s Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative.

Held at the headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department, our roundtable fostered a lively dialogue among some of the top academic, public safety, and communications industry leaders. Together we surfaced opportunities in areas where innovation might deliver greater value at lower cost such as network sharing, network (and security) operations centers, and wireless applications.

The discussion provided helpful input for the proposed R&D portion of the public safety investment, as called for in the President’s proposal, with emphasis on opportunities for pre-competitive R&D collaboration to accelerate the pace of innovation in delivering a cost-effective, secure, reliable network that meets public safety-specific requirements. Just as important, we identified potential pitfalls to avoid.

Topics ranged from new approaches to network and infrastructure sharing, cloud computing, and operations management.

I would like to personally thank the talented academic, public safety, and communications industry professionals who took the time out of their busy schedules to ensure we build a nationwide network that is as technically and operationally efficient and effective as possible.

Stay tuned for more opportunities to engage in this important topic.

Innovation Day Roundtable Attendees:

• Bob Azzi, Sprint
• Chris Barnes, Informed Publishing
• Vanu Bose, Vanu, Inc.
• Keith Bryars, Department of Justice
• Ronald Buschur, Powerwave
• R. Chandramouli, Stevens Institute of Technology
• Milton Chen, vsee.com
• Michael Coffin, Informed Publishing
• Kelley Dunne, One Economy
• Chris Essid, Department of Homeland Security
• Barry Fraser, San Francisco Department of Emergency Management
• Michelle Geddes, City and County of San Francisco
• Anna Gomez, Department of Commerce
• Joe Heaps, Department of Justice
• Fred Jarrett, King County, WA
• Lance Johnson, Department of Commerce
• Walt Magnussen, Internet2 US UCAN, Texas A&M University
• Yannis Macheres, American Tower
• Jeanette Manfra, Department of Homeland Security
• Victa McClelland, Ericsson Inc
• Kevin McGinnis, SAFECOM Executive Committee
• Nick McKeown, Stanford University
• Chris Moore, San Jose Police Department
• Carolyn Nguyen, Microsoft
• Dereck Orr, Department of Commerce
• Scott Poster, Los Angeles County Fire Department
• Ramesh Rao, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology
• Kris Rinne, AT&T
• Chuck Robinson, City of Charlotte
• Tony Sabatino, One Economy
• Greg Schaffer, Department of Homeland Security
• Bill Schrier, City of Seattle
• Richard Schwartz, Macheen, Inc.
• Brian Shepherd, Adams County, Colorado Communications Center
• Doug Smith, Lightsquared
• Paul Steinberg, Motorola Solutions
• Jenny Toigo, Department of Justice
• Morgan Wright, Alcatel-Lucent

Aneesh Chopra is US Chief Technology Officer