The Purpose of This Piece Is to Try to Establish Some Guidelines for the Alarm Industry

Alarm Industry Communications Committee

FirstNet Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network

White Paper

(DRAFT 09/29/13)

FirstNet Background

The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 (Public Law 112-96) was signed into law by President Obama on February 22, 2012. It created the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) as an independent authority within the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) at the U.S Department of Commerce. The Act directs FirstNet to establish a single nationwide, interoperable public safety broadband network. The FirstNet Board is responsible for making strategic decisions regarding FirstNet’s operations.

Benefits for Alarm Industry and FirstNet

There are mutual benefits for the alarm industry and FirstNet if FirstNet authorizes the alarm industry to be a user of the FirstNet Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN).

The use of the NPSBN by the alarm industry would be for premises alarm units at government facilities, business, and homes, to communicate alarm information through the NPSBN to participating central station alarm facilities. Typical signals would be burglar alarm, fire alarm, medical alarmsignals, and other related signals. The verified alarm information would then be transmitted from the central station alarm facility to the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) using the Automated Secure Alarm Protocol (ASAP) or if ASAP is not available through the NPSBN. In some cases streaming video would be transmitted from the alarm premises to the central station alarm facility and could then, upon request, be relayed to the PSAP. The PSAP could then transmit the streaming video from the alarm premises to first responders using the NPSBN. The alarm industry would be substantially viewed as a “secondary user,” of the NPSBNbut with additional privileges as outlined below. In non-emergency periods, alarm industry users would in essence have the same unfettered usage as all other users. Alarm companies would benefit from their access to the more reliable and secure FirstNet network (rather than a commercial network) and FirstNet would benefit from a negotiated monthly/annual usage fee from the alarm companies.

Alarm Industry Eligibility

Eligibility might be overseen by an organization such as the Central Station Alarm Association (CSAA) or the Alarm Industry Communications Committee (AICC), whowould in essence issue a “permit” toalarm central station companies. The alarm central stationcompany would have to prove its eligibility as a listedcompany (listed by a Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory such as UL, ETL or FM) and its knowledge of the rules.

Priority

Recognizing the need of citizens to maintain continual police, fire and medical alarm protection, in the event of a local or regionalemergency, when the administrator of Public Safety network declares it necessary, thealarm central station users would have their bandwidth usage limited to basic, low bandwidth application use such as normal burglar alarm, fire alarm and medical emergency signaling, shedding high bandwidth signaling such as streaming video. Such limits would be done on a local, city, or regional basis as required. This could potentially be done automatically through installed equipment that automatically limits bandwidth through system commands.(If such equipment were to become available, use of this equipment would become part of the eligibility requirements.)

Requests for additional Bandwidth

When requested by the administrator of Public Safety network, either at an incident or over a greater area, additional bandwidth to certain applications could be used to aid Public Safety. An example of this might be turning on streaming video to be able to look inside a particular alarmed building. This could potentially be done automatically through installed equipment that automatically controls bandwidth to applications through system commands.