Today’s Environment
In recent years, dramatic criminal, terrorist, and natural disasters have seared into the public mind the importance of seamless emergency services. Today more than ever, the public expects those services will be delivered regardless of disparate technologies, long turf battles between agencies and jurisdictions, and lack of available or adequate funding. Public safety as an entity (the collection of police, fire, emergency medical services and supporting agencies), is now challenged to serve the public by integrating services across these boundaries that are not easily separated by administrative lines or simple classifications.
Despite the high priority placed on public safety by government at all levels, First Responders continue to struggle to communicate with peers in other agencies or jurisdictions as part of coordinated emergency response efforts; as do State and Local governments struggle to address the organizational, technology and financial issues that prohibit interoperability among public safety communications systems.
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How it works
A major emergency within City A limits triggers a toxic incident with potential for high civilian casualties. All First Responders in City A are immediately notified, as are counterparts in Cities B and C. Other designated city and County agencies and personnel are similarly notified and automatically connected in pre-planned tiered workgroups from all the agencies. Each well-defined workgroup permits effective span of control and reporting, enabling emergency personnel to respond and react to their respective situations and then proceed to the recovery phase as previously planned. With all voice channels fully interoperable, updates can also occur through video conferencing and streaming, text messaging (SMS), and data and wireless connectivity. Conversations can be recorded with Call Detail Records (CDR) available for review and planning purposes.
 How connectivity is achieved
Radios tethered to connectors on gateways become base stations for those frequencies. Gateways can be stacked to support multiple frequencies. Signaling and data is transcoded into IP and permitted to pass through the client’s firewall into a secure, bit encrypted IP-VPN tunnel that automatically connects to a unicomconnect™ hosted platform via the internet (or private network). The platform also connects to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), cellular and private networks and acts as a ‘SoftSwitch’ or giant PBX in the cloud. Cellular or landline phones can call radio channels or digitally trunked Dual Tone Multi-Function (DTMF) radios. Radios can call selected cellular, landline, data or other connected radio channel numbers. |
