Honolulu Police Go Wireless
The City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii, has placed an order with AT&T Wireless for 1,600 EDGE wireless modem cards to give police, fire and emergency services officers access to the fastest national wireless data network in the United States.
The Honolulu transaction represents the largest EDGE deployment to-date in the nation. The EDGE cards will work in conjunction with laptops mounted in patrol cars, fire trucks and other emergency vehicles.
The system will be used to dispatch first responders to incident scenes and allow officers to write and transmit reports directly from their vehicles. EDGE also will give personnel direct access to local, state and federal criminal databases and the ability to retrieve suspects’ photographs and documents such as restraining orders.
The deployment is expected to be completed this fall. The AT&T Wireless EDGE network is up to three times faster than traditional 56K dial-up and is available in more than 7,500 cities and towns, and along 30,000 miles of highways across the nation.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Business Wire (09/08/04).