Supporting critical operations
After the 9/11 attacks and the August 2003 northeast regional blackout, New York began building a dedicated, resilient, high-speed broadband network for first responders’ mission-critical communications. To ensure that public safety personnel will be able to communicate, the city spent $375 million to build a government-only broadband network and pays approximately $37 million annually to maintain it.
The New York City Wireless Network (NYCWiN) is an IP-based mobile data network that operates across more than 300 square miles of the city. It is a government-based network that provides first responders with high-speed data access. Field officers can transfer large files, including fingerprints, mug shots, maps, automatic vehicle location and full-motion streaming video. Nick Sbordone, spokesperson for the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, says it also links first responders working an incident with incident managers at remote sites — or even at command and control — through real-time data and video feeds.
The network supports more than 40 mobile government applications and serves 22 agencies, including the police and transportation departments. It provides multiple levels of prioritization so that critical users — such as police officers responding to a gun incident — can access bandwidth when they need it, Sbordone says. It also lets the city control bandwidth allocations so that groups of users can have extra bandwidth dedicated to them on demand; for instance, when police transmit video. “The system protects and encrypts data transmitted over the network from end-to-end,” Sbordone says.
New York plans to integrate up to 10,000 additional modems onto the network to facilitate a wider range of public safety and public service needs. “We continue to work on ways to further build out the city’s wireless network to improve public safety and other services to our residents,” he says.
Mary Rose Roberts is associate editor of Fire Chief and Urgent Communications, sister publications of American City & County.
- Read the “New York departments using wireless broadband” sidebar to learn what different departments are using the network for.
- Read the “Corpus Christi wireless broadband network stats” sidebar to learn about the network.
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New York departments using wireless broadband
New York Police Department: More than 1,300 modems have been installed in police vehicles to enable access to information, including driver’s license scanning, mug shot downloads and license plate reader capabilities.
Department of Environmental Protection: The Automated Meter Reading Program measures water consumption at consumer locations throughout the city using units transmitting data across the New York City Wireless Network (NYCWiN). Currently, 600,000 consumer meters — or 70 percent of the total planned — are operational within the city’s five boroughs. Nearly 835,000 meter-reading units will be installed across the city by the end of 2012.
Department of Transportation: The city’s Traffic Management Program enables transportation staff to track, watch and analyze traffic flow at locations across five boroughs, streaming real-time information back to central operations over NYCWiN. The program covers approximately 2,400 intersections across the city.
Fleet Management: NYCWiN supports an enterprise automatic vehicle location capability that enables the agency’s control center to accurately dispatch its fleet resources and monitor vehicle diagnostics. The application supports more than 400 fleet vehicles spanning 13 city agencies.
Corpus Christi wireless broadband network stats
Coverage area: 147 square miles
Wi-Fi radios deployed: 1,645
Water and gas meters read automatically: 42,000
Wi-Fi video cameras deployed: 42
Wi-Fi equipped vehicles: 102
Public hot zones (free Wi-Fi/Internet): 30
Public user sessions (per month): 50,000
Internet bandwidth for public hot zones: 40 Mb
Internal government hot zones: 68
Wireless fire stations: 1
Average bandwidth (system wide): 2.7 Mb down / 2.5 Mb up
Maximum bandwidth available (single site): 9 Mb down / 9 Mb up
