City Hall in Phoenix: Building up public-safety networks with the RWC

PHOENIX—Arizona’s Regional Wireless Cooperative (RWC) is one of the largest public-safety radios systems in the country, serving 17 member cities, towns and fire districts in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Getting there, including a Project 25 trunked radio system that is interoperable across multiple jurisdictions, has been challenging but rewarding.
David Felix, executive director of the RWC said the Phoenix metropolitan area has itself a complicated network to work within public safety.
“Motorola (Solutions Inc.) (MSI) said the RWC is one of the most complex in the country,” said Felix. “My role in it is with heavy emphasis on interaction and collaboration between government entities, testifying at member’s city council meetings and interfacing with state and federal agencies in the region.”
The multi-jurisdictional cooperative is funded by member agencies, which today include the cities of Avondale, Buckeye, Chandler, El Mirage, Goodyear, Glendale, Guadalupe, Maricopa, Peoria, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Surprise and Tempe; and Daisy Mountain, Sun City, Sun City and Sun City West fire districts; and has seen many changes through the years. An early VHF and UHF communications system formerly dominated the City of Phoenix’s public safety and department services and was based on technology dating back to the 1950s, which was being overrun and had no room for expansion around the dawn of the new millennium.
“With those frequencies there were only a few channels available,” said Bill Phillips, enterprise manager in the City of Phoenix’s information technology office. “There was no capability to do encryption, the system was old and it couldn’t support us anymore.”
As Phoenix exploded in growth to become now the sixth largest city in the nation, something needed to be done. After studying the complex problems and meeting with consultants, the city replaced the existing system with a Project 25, digital, 800 MHz trunked radio system with the aid of a bond package voted on in 2001 and completed in 2005. The initial buildout was approximately $125 million and has since increased to $170 million with Motorola as the main partner in the infrastructure build. The three areas of coverage targeted for penetration in the greater Phoenix area centered on downtown metropolitan, industrial, and residential areas.
In order to facilitate a more seamless transition, the city formed the Phoenix Regional Wireless Network (PRWN) and moved the Phoenix police, fire and municipal departments to the new system. The PRWN started as a regional radio system supporting the city’s operations as well as the fire department’s automatic aid partners and in 2008, membership with many new partners led to changing the name to the Regional Wireless Cooperative (RWC).
The RWC is now one of the largest public safety radios systems in the country, serving 17
member cities, towns and fire districts in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Staff from the Los
Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System (LA-RICS) recently spent time with the RWC administrative, technical and operational personnel in preparation for a major procurement contract to upgrade the Los Angeles area public-safety radio system.
The RWC was solicited for best practices and lessons learned while developing, procuring,
constructing and operating its large P-25 800 MHz digital trunked system.
Membership includes the majority of cities in the Phoenix metropolitan area and governance is under a cooperative body with all 17 members of the board having one vote to represent their member city, regardless of size, and is open to all local, state, and federal governmental and tribal entities.
The City of Phoenix serves as the administrative managing member and is responsible for the administration and financial management of the RWC, which meets every two months.
Some challenges the RWC cited were building towers on lands to prevent eyesores and explaining the need to citizens for these vital communication services in their neighborhoods where coverage was lacking.
The RWC’s public-safety radio network is based on the Project 25, phase I standard. The network is an ASTRO 25 integrated voice and data, trunked radio system. It operates in the 700/800 MHz frequency bands and uses standard simulcast, IP simulcast, and individual site trunking. The network consists of seven major simulcast subsystems and 10 intelligent site repeaters (ISR’s).
The system provides seamless, wide area coverage across the entire metropolitan area. It is data capable, but at the current time is only used in a data capacity to provide encryption services.
Some of the benefits of a large regional radio system for Phoenix and elsewhere include a wide area coverage beyond what cities could achieve individually; seamless interoperability (the ability for diverse public-safety agencies to communicate directly, in real-time); shared resources (e.g. people, equipment and tower sites); and shared funding based on size. The shared resources in Phoenix include about 65 sites with some collocation leading to around 45 separate transmit and receive facilities owned by the RWC. The RWC doesn’t allow carriers to collocate on their towers as of yet, but are collocated on a handful of carrier sites.
Grants have been used to link the many dispatch centers in the valley, increase system capacity, add several mountain sites for wide-area coverage, backup and interoperability, and provide cache radios to be used for emergencies.
The RWC system was used during the 2004 presidential debate linking motorcade officers, providing interoperability for Tempe and ASU, and administrative communications for the ASU staff coordinating the debate. The system was also in use for past annual Fiesta Bowls, the BCS football game, the 2008 Super Bowl, and the 2009 NBA All Star game. The Super Bowl, in particular, demonstrated the need for a regional radio system and prompted more discussions between Phoenix metropolitan cities on how to form and use the RWC.
“For the Super Bowl, we prepared a deck for open communications, a deck for encryption, and several different decks on the radios for interoperability,” said Philips. “They were all wide area talk groups that would work anywhere on the system.”
Future plans of the RWC include upgrading a Federal Communications Commission mandate on software to roam seamlessly by 2017. Due to the requirements, all subscriber radios in the Phoenix system will need to be changed out. Another current project includes a distributed antennae system (DAS), which is being implemented at Sky Harbor International Airport through service company Creative Communications.
More than 25 non-members agencies have purchased radios, which were been programmed to permit these agencies to interoperate with RWC members. Some of these organizations include: Arizona State University, Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), Arizona Department of Corrections, Arizona Department of Emergency Management, Arizona Department of Health Services, Arizona Department of Public Safety (GIITEM, IIMPACT), Arizona Department of Transportation (DOT), the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, and the U.S. Marshals.