SmartLink Radio Networks to provide San Francisco with interoperable radio networks

With more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies and 35,000 fire and emergency agencies proudly serving nationwide, communication between them can be difficult. Lacking federal guidance, local agencies traditionally have purchased their radio systems without regard for interoperability with others, resulting in a mishmash of confusion whenever they were forced to work together. The problem first came to the fore after the Oklahoma City bombings, but it was the rescue efforts on 9/11 that really caught the federal government’s attention. Since then, a number of government programs have begun issuing grants and offering assistance — so many that one executive in the business told us even he wasn’t aware of them all — and the number of companies interested in capturing a segment of the billion dollar-plus emergency radio interoperability business has multiplied as well.

SmartLink Radio Networks is not the biggest fish in this sea, but its recent successes working with municiplities like Solano County, California and Brunswick County, North Carolina, have clearly impressed the federal government. The company announced this week that the U.S. Department of Justice had selected it to design and deliver an interoperable public safety radio system for emergency service providers in San Francisco, California. The award was made under the Department of Justice’s High Risk Metropolitan Area Interoperability Assistance Project in coordination with the County and City of San Francisco. According to Smartlink president Mark Hatten, this is the firm’s first federal contract.

The Smartlink I-Network platform works by integrating disparate radio frequencies and bands into a digital network. This may sound easy, but in fact it requires careful calibration to manage differing talk time and trunking features. Unlike cross-patch solutions — mobile devices that can be brought to the scene of an emergency to facilitate communication — the I-Network is attached to the infrastructure and is always on, making it ideal both for severe emergencies and the more common accidents that bring police, fire, and EMS teams to the same scene.

The company may have locked up San Francisco, but the market has plenty of room to grow. A 2004 survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, found that “23% of local public-safety agencies said they couldn’t communicate across their own police and fire departments. A third said they can’t talk to the county sheriff. Most can’t talk to state or federal agencies,” according to a USA Today report.

-read more in this company news release