In these difficult economic times, U.S. federal and state governments are looking for alternatives to cut costs of living for citizens. While the concept of upgraded infrastructure has long meant building more bridges and roads, political parties are focusing on a new area — broadband and communications infrastructure.  
Technology, it seems, is being explored as the solution that will allow the country to grow out of its current economic slump. What role will the satellite industry play in the building process? What technology and hardware will be necessary to achieve these goals?
    Already, there are several players in the industry planning for the years ahead. The second part of Satellite News’s three-part feature on the satellite industry’s role in updating America’s broadband infrastructure looks at enhancing emergency networks for municipal governments.

Part 2 – Enhancing Emergency Networks
[Satellite News 08-07-08] When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, response time from the federal government all the way down to municipal emergency services was viewed as incredibly slow. The lack of efficiency left several key first responders frustrated, and New Orleans residents and the media angrily pointed fingers at the government’s emergency response mechanism.
    While the U.S. federal government is one of the most technologically advanced organizations in terms of emergency communications, municipalities often are years behind, said Dave Beering, managing director of Morgan Franklin. “Some of the biggest bureaucracies I have worked with have been municipalities,” said Beering, whose company works on state-of-the-art homeland security technology for military and government customers. “My company worked with a city government client and updated their emergency communications of 50 years in a matter of eight hours. When you have information moving quickly on the top end and then falling apart by the time it gets to mismanaged and out-of-date municipal systems, crucial time and even lives are lost.”
    Frank Prautzsch, a director with the Rapid Initiatives Group for Raytheon, has seen firsthand the disarray in some of the emergency broadband infrastructure. “You can go into 911 call centers and still find someone who is sending information on an obligated network and transferring it to a first responder who does not have a radio,” he said. “We do not have an integrated global system that offers effective radio architecture. I talked to some local municipalities; they can’t even equip their patrols or their first responder vehicles with radios, let alone satcom. While we are talking about bringing ourselves into a new decade, we have got people who still are stuck in the 1980s.”
     Prautzsch asserted that in the United States, there is a pre-disposed notion that effective emergency communication starts and ends with voice over radio.
    “There is no embracing of IP environments for the first-responder other than data,” said Prautzsch. “That is a cultural problem and an outgrowth of where the radio market is. That is starting to change. How the satellite community impacts on-the-move functions are key. [Mobile satellite services] are key — the ability to implement broadband to on-demand call centers can have quite a presence for consequence management. If there is some major event somewhere it is hard to influence them by being completely out of zone. You have to go ahead and bring in the assets to affect the circumstances. That cannot be done by remote control.” 


Nets Over Networks
    Hampton Roads, a regional area comprised of an inlet harbor and surrounding towns in southeastern Virginia, is the second most vulnerable infrastructure system to hurricanes after New Orleans, according to state-conducted research ordered by Gov. Tim Kaine.
    At a July press conference at the Brookings Institution, Kaine called for the immediate establishment of both physical and communications infrastructure. “In a hurricane situation — and there will be a day it will hit — we will have to evacuate 700,000 people in 40-plus hours,” he said. “In order for that to happen, we need better roads and access from the East and West out of the port areas. We also need updated broadband infrastructure. We spent $300 million on broadband in Virginia. We need to tackle these issues now.”
    How can mobile satellite service providers be involved in these emergency projects? Prautszch said, “As long as there is a content management system in place to make these systems operable, terminals working together with that system would be grand.”
    Prautszch also called for creating “nets,” as opposed to networks. “A net implies the ability to talk and have everyone else listen or just eavesdrop to a larger group,” he said. “If we had an open circuit where there were 25 responders communicating on a major issue and any of those 25 could bark into the phone and the other 24 could hear what that person was saying, it would be ideal. It kind of works like a standing conference bridge. I can still talk faster than I can type. I can also share with you my frustration over voice more so than I can over a data line. There are major activities and involvements going on which will change the architecture for voice.”