NY State’s Public Service Net: Back to the Drawing Board?
Posted by Sam Churchill on August 22nd, 2008
New York State should ditch a $2 billion plan for a statewide wireless network for emergency workers, unless the already delayed system can be fixed, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said on Thursday.
“After three rounds of failed testing, it is apparent that this system is not ready to move forward. M/A-COM has not met its contractual obligations and New York can’t afford to spend $2 billion on a system that doesn’t work right,” he said. “M/A-COM has to deliver what it promised,” DiNapoli added.
The state-wide network would enable emergency first responders, such as police and firefighters, to talk to each other. It would use Project 25 radios, an interoperable, 2-way radio standard that allows different voice users to communicate. It also enables slow (9.6 Kbps), data transmission.
The New York State Office for Technology (OFT) is expected to decide whether to accept or reject the first phase of the network build-out in two counties by August 29th. Melodie Mayberry-Stewart (right), has taken over as the director of the Office of Technology and said that the Aug. 29 deadline, for thumbs up or down on the contract, is firm.
M/A-COM doesn’t get a dime if it’s thumbs down. Plus, a $50 million letter of credit filed by M/A-COM with the state may be tapped for what the state has spent already in anticipation.
When the administration of Gov. George E. Pataki awarded the contract in 2005, some lawmakers questioned whether the company was the best choice. M/A-COM was represented by former Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, a close ally of the governor. Some of those lawmakers thought that Motorola’s proposal would have been a better choice. A spokesman for Motorola said on Thursday that the company had completed or was working on similar systems in 28 states.
New York’s statewide wireless emergency communications system would not include any construction in the protected wilderness areas of the Adirondacks and Catskills. Tyco International subsidiary, M/A-Com, bid roughly $1 billion for the 20-year contract. They planned to use as few as four towers in the Adirondacks and the Catskills, and none in protected areas.
That was sharply fewer than the bid from Motorola which proposed 400 towers for the project. Motorola’s bid was roughly $3 billion. New York officials said the different approach to building new towers was the major reason for the vast difference in the bids.
In the Tyco proposal, repeaters are an essential element in avoiding the construction of towers. Repeaters are used throughout the country as a standard way of giving greater amplification to the transmissions of hand-held radios.
Tyco Electronics’ M/A-COM business won the contract in 2005, the biggest New York state technology contract ever awarded.
The statewide network was expected to be completed and fully operational by July 2010. M/A-COM said in March it successfully completed coverage testing in the two New York counties that comprise the first region of the network to be built.
But more recent testing, carried out by the state, is more critical. The system is a year and a half behind schedule and has suffered from technology problems, according to Jennifer Freeman a spokeswoman for the comptroller. “It’s very likely this contract is not going to go ahead unless the issues are fixed,” said Freeman. The state will spend $60 million less on the project over the next two years, as the result of a special legislative session that ended this week.
Tyco Electronics said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters that the audit “includes a number of inaccuracies” and said it would “correct any remaining outstanding issues related to the first phase of this program.”
In rural Chautauqua, it worked. But in populated Erie County, with tall buildings and crammed cellphone towers, there were numerous gaps in coverage and the system was deemed not successful. In May, more tests found roughly the same problems, only fewer of them.
Officials from M/A-Com expressed confidence the issues could be addressed, and said problems in Buffalo had been caused by interference from other radio transmissions. The system has been tested in neighboring Chatauqua County, which is mainly rural, and officials there had no complaints, said Victoria Dillon, an M/A-Com spokeswoman.
The gaps were “localized in a few sites, like cell carriers, a TV station in Canada,” Ms. Dillon said. Michael R. Mittleman, the state official overseeing the project for the Office of Technology, agreed.
Comptroller DiNapoli advised New York should go back to the drawing board unless M/A-COM can fix problems.
If M/A-COM fails the final evaluation in Erie and Chautauqua counties, it is uncertain what direction the state could take next. It could seek to still improve the M/A-COM solution, rebid the project that could add further delays or just scrap the whole idea of a statewide wireless network.
The Oregon Telecommunications Coordinating Council (ORTCC) got together with the Oregon State Interoperability Executive Council — as many states have done — to develop a similar $500 million state-wide public service network (which later grew to $650 million). It would be a voice-oriented network, used exclusively by first responders. Federal Engineering, which is advising the New York Network, was awarded Oregon’s contract to create a presentation (Real Video) and review the scope, goals and costs of the Oregon Wireless Interoperability Network project. Like many such projects, the choice came down to two dominant Project 25 providers, Motorola and M/A-Com. A two-slot TDMA doubles system capacity and meets the FCC’s requirement for 6.25 kHz channel equivalency by creating two voice paths within a 12.5 kHz channel with a half rate IMBE vocoder.
Finding the money to build a state-wide, interoperable (and narrow-band) radio network exclusively for first responders, is a problem for virtually every state. The state-wide infrastructure can cost billions, while thousands of Project 25, 2-way voice radios, costing $3,500 each, can cost additional hundreds of millions of dollars — billions in the case of New York. Where is the money coming from?
Nobody seems to know.
Some believe the solution lies in the nationwide, broadband 700 Mhz channels, which the FCC unsuccessfully tried to auction recently. That would provide 20 Mhz of broadband spectrum that could be shared by both public service agencies and ordinary mortals. In the FCC’s plan, the winning bidder would build a nationwide network at no cost to state or federal governments. The FCC will likely try auctioning the frequencies again next year.
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