The Critical Need for Network Redundancy in Public Safety

Joe Pawlows, Verizon Frontline Crisis Response Team senior manager for Arizona and Southern Nevada, likens a cellular telephone network to a tube to explain how traffic jams occur during high-usage situations.

“If you think of communication as a tube and all the cell services going through this tube, all of a sudden you get a hundred [responders] using this tube [and] that tube gets smaller and smaller and smaller,” says Pawlows.

This is where the Verizon Frontline team steps in to help. “What do we do when that tube is filled up? We have a Version SLED (State, Local, and EDucation) team that actually can give [first responders] priority for communication,” says Pawlows. “We’ll bump some people off of the large tube, put them in a smaller tube—not taking away their service, but maybe downgrading their service temporarily—so that priority communication can go through for any kind of incident command. And that’s something that we offer through all public safety.”

Based on a recent EMS World interview with Pawlows and Curtis Mentz, associate director of the Verizon Frontline Crisis Response Team-West, this e-book profiles the critical need for infrastructure and communications redundancy in critical-need situations.