RESPONSE: County Commissioner Olson Responds to Goertzen Letter about Measure 29-180 – Public Safety Radio System Bond Measure

Here is Tillamook County Commissioner Doug Olson’s response to Mr. Goertzen’s letter – https://www.tillamookcountypioneer.net/measure-29-180-is-misguided-and-wasteful/

Mr. Goertzen,

Thank you for your comments and observations. They are always welcome. Here is my quick response.

Cell phones do not (yet) have the capabilities, reliability, ease of use and many other requirements of a true point to point Land Mobile Radio (LMR) system. Please refer to the below (in Bold) response from Federal Engineering, the consulting design firm retained by Tillamook County. They provide design service only and do not sell or recommend specific products.

As to cost, a very quick analysis of cell phones on a four-year replacement cycle for over 1100 radios, base (911) improvements, monthly fees, supporting equipment, security considerations, several new towers and more would bring the cost over 20+ years to a significant number, perhaps more than the proposed LMR system.

LMR radios use VHF and UHF frequency bands with certain proven radiation characteristics which work the same across the world. Cellular technology uses much higher bands in the radio frequency spectrum with more line-of-sight requirements usually requiring phone to tower to phone connections. Most cell phones require dial-up to activate, not push to talk (PTT).

More importantly is the specific use for overall public safety, which most would agree should be the highest priority of local government. Communications among first responders can quite literally be a matter of life and death. To rely on marginal or unproven technology for point-to-point public safety needs would be a foolish decision and very poor public policy in my opinion.

“Why can’t the system be improved with cell phones and Starlink?”

For public safety agencies, confidence in commercial cellular or satellite services is not as high as in land mobile radio. For instance, the AT&T FirstNet service was negatively impacted by initial performance during large-scale disaster incidents, e.g., hurricanes, tornadoes, etc., but the availability of deployable assets and site hardening has seen significant improvement. There are still gaps in network visibility during these types of events that require improvement from a public safety agency perspective. The recent nationwide outage that impacted FirstNet and AT&T users in February 2024 for multiple hours and a widespread AT&T data breach from 2022 was also discovered to have impacted Public safety users.

Additionally, Starlink’s website states that “trees or other obstructions will cause performance issues”, which could further exacerbate the communication issues the county is currently experiencing in the county’s forested, rugged terrain. Service reliability (including coverage, capacity, and security) are important to public safety agencies to ensure efficient and safe operations. Trust in the cellular and satellite service reliability will take years to earn and only a matter of seconds to lose.

Ruggedized mobile devices currently do not meet the public safety requirements for form, function, ruggedness, resilience, battery swap, and physical Push-to-Talk (PTT) buttons etc. While this is improving, and more ruggedized mobile devices that include these capabilities are now available, there are still gaps between land mobile radio (LMR) devices and commercial PTT mobile devices, including the lack of a usable direct mode for off-network communications.

Starlink and other Direct to Device (D2D) satellite services are being tested. Based on prior experiences with satellite services and costs, public safety agency adoption will likely be limited to specific use cases, at least until the service’s viability can be effectively demonstrated.

Public safety agencies expect service reliability to be mission-critical, meaning it is available wherever and whenever they need it. Land Mobile Radio currently meets this requirement, whereas cellular and mobile broadband networks do not.”

Thanks again for your continued interest and questions.

Regards,

Doug Olson | Vice-Chair

TILLAMOOK COUNTY | Board of County Commissioners

For more information: https://www.yesfortillamooksafety.org/