The Brazos County Texas Sheriff’s Office and the City of Richmond, Virginia subscribed to the FirstNet nationwide public safety broadband communications network, they announced. Another public safety agency, the Kansas Highway Patrol, also recently chose FirstNet, Inside Towers reported.
The agencies noted improved efficiency and situational awareness for emergency response, expanded capacity for communications, use of mission critical functions and features, like priority and preemption and access to advanced technologies and applications as the top reasons for joining FirstNet.
“We’re still doing the same job. But with FirstNet, we can do it even better and faster than before,” said Brazos County Sheriff Chris Kirk in the announcement. “We have all the information we need at our fingertips, backed by the connectivity needed to access it. And most importantly, it keeps our deputies out in the neighborhoods, so we can spend more time serving Brazos County.” Watch the press conference here.
Stephen Willoughby, director and chief of Richmond’s Department of Emergency Communications, called the decision to go with FirstNet a “no-brainer,” noting that, “Here, we had a federally subsidized program offering us an efficient, reliable system for our first responders to share mobile data with priority and preemption.”
January 30, 2018
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