Public Safety agencies for 88 cities and the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County currently use a patchwork of 40 aging radio networks. That means they can’t readily talk to each other, creating communications delays that waste time and imperil lives.
LA-RICS’ initiative is to replace this system with a state-of-the-art network solely dedicated to emergency responders.
The Land Mobile Radio (LMR) system creates a unified web of communication, eliminates barriers to multi-jurisdictional responses and allows police, firefighters and paramedics to communicate directly with users outside of their agency. Construction of this network is underway.
Emergency responders also using the same commercial broadband services that millions of us do for our smartphones and mobile devices. That means public safety agencies are competing for space on bandwidths that often slow down and sometimes crash during times of disasters or emergencies.
The Public Safety Broadband Network (PSBN) provides police and firefighters with the capability to send and receive large amounts of data, for instance, allowing an emergency room doctor to view and direct the efforts of firefighters or paramedics—saving time and lives.
This network was completed on October 1, 2015 and is currently in use by various agencies throughout Los Angeles County. It consists of 63 fixed towers and 15 temporary sites that use Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology. In July 2018 the network was transferred to AT&T for integration into the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband (NPSBN) under FirstNet.