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GCN Home > 04/30/07 issue

Agencies activate IWN plan

Standardized net should adapt to local law enforcement needs

By Wilson P. Dizard III, GCN Staff

Three arms of federal law enforcement are planning, at last, to catch up with Dick Tracy. The Justice, Homeland Security and Treasury departments, each with multiple law enforcement wireless systems, have launched a 15-year, standards-based project to build a nationwide interoperable federal law enforcement network.

But even as they begin to assign specific tasks to integrator General Dynamics C4 Systems for building the Integrated Wireless Network, the agencies are planning a system with varying technologies customized to the terrain and law enforcement missions in different regions of the country.

Federal cost estimates for IWN have ranged as high as $10 billion over 15 years. The departments framed the IWN acquisition to answer the call for secure, interoperable wireless communications in voice, data and multimedia formats.

Some phases of the IWN technology package have emerged during the years that the Justice-led acquisition has run pilots in the Gulf Coast region, Oregon and eastern Washington state.

For example, Justice stated in an e-mail response to a GCN inquiry, “The IWN will be a hybrid of wireless technologies which will employ relevant and appropriate standards.”

Justice pointed to its plans to use the Project 25 land mobile radio standards that are intended to pave the way for an open system in the law enforcement radio arena.

The Project 25 process is developing standardized interfaces to link varying mission-critical land mobile radio systems.

“Ultimately, you could reach the point where you could purchase the radios as commodities,” said Jeff Osman, General Dynamics’ executive program manager for IWN. “It may take some time to reach that point.”

IWN also will rely on IPv6 technology and evolving National Institute of Standards and Technology security standards, Justice said.

Those standards will be the same nationwide, according to the federal plan, but some differences will characterize systems in different areas.

Asked about IWN’s relationship to some urban police departments’ broadband multimedia system pilots, Justice said it “does not intend to migrate the entire wireless system to any one technology, but instead will look to utilize a range of wireless services to meet the department’s communication needs. Real-time broadband video is a potential example.”

On the same topic, Osman noted that providing multimedia broadband service requires big pipes, and that such bandwidth can get expensive quickly.

More news on related topics: Communications / Networks, Mobile & Wireless, Business Process Management, Homeland Security, IT Management



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