APCO Vice-President, Willis Carter, gave the Senate Commerce Committee the following rcommendations:
"- Making significant improvements in local, regional, and national interoperability;
- Planning and training for disasters;
- Establishing common incident command structures at all levels of the emergency response effort;
- Funding to ensure that public safety communications networks are built and maintained to withstand worse-case scenarios;
- Establishing a hard date for nationwide public safety access to the 700 MHz band;
- Allocating additional 700 MHz band spectrum for mobile broadband operations to provide high speed video and data to and among public safety
personnel and agencies in the field;
- Providing additional funding to assist public safety agencies in their acquisition of state-of-the-art interoperable communications equipment;
- Considering public safety answering points (PSAPs) and other emergency communications centers as core elements of the first response structure;
- Mirroring telephone central offices supporting 9-1-1 tandems in locations sufficiently remote to allow for quick restoration of 9-1-1 services, and;
- Providing funds to assist PSAPs in their upgrades for wireless E9-1-1 and other technologies."
What else can you add to the list, especially first responders who have served during the past month in the affected states?
