Cook County (IL)

Chicago, City of

• Interop

System Diagram FCC Acrobat Document The City of Chicago hereby requests 180-day Emergency Special Temporary Authority for the operation of the below described systems/channels to provide the necessary RF linkage between existing City operations and the Statewide interoperability initiative employing the Astro 21 system and those channels being deployed as a portion of the U.S. Department of Justice's High-Risk Metropolitan Area Interoperability Assistance Project. In essence, the City seeks designated channels which can be employed for the purpose offacilitating the coordination of construction of new systems being deployed, e.g. the UHF system that is being constructed County-wide to provide local interoperability throughout Northern Illinois; existing systems, e.g. the City's 800 MHz radio facilities that require RF connectivity to the Statewide Astro 21 network; and to facilities interoperability in the extended use of VHF radio systems employed by firefighters throughout the region. The requested UHF channels would also provide necessary RF linkage for the City's emergency medical personnel. Over 925 paramedics and command personnel provide EMS services to City residents on a UHF system that is extremely limited in system capacity. There is no way to upgrade the system and concurrently move it toward interoperability by redeployment of the existing channels. Any downtime of the system caused by shifting facilities, rather than adding UHF links, at this time would be disastrous. The requested temporary authority to operate on the proposed UHF links would also serve this vital purpose to provide an RF bridge between what is now in place and what will be deployed in the future via a system redesign and upgrade. Similarly, the City operates its present VHF systems to support the over 2,500 fire fighters that protect the City against disasters. The present system was never designed with interoperability as a goal and the City is attempting to take immediate steps toward rectifying this situation, again, to allow all City departments the advantage of greater interagency cooperation and coordination. To provide the necessary spectrum to transition this system toward full interoperability and to increase the overall utility of the existing VHF radio system, the City proposes to employ the VHF channels identified herein on a temporary basis to bridge the gap in improved system design and capacity, without having to reconfigure existing facilities and lose vital throughput. Finally, the City's use of 800 MHz radio channels are to operate a Citywide emergency siren system and a number of data channels in support of drug enforcement, disaster response, and the Organized Crime division. The systems are in flux for a number of reasons, including the City's participation in 800 MHz re-banding pursuant to FCC Docket WT 02-55. Although the re-banding efforts are arduous and tax severely the resources of the City's radio technical personnel, the City cannot back away from its ongoing efforts to increase the functionality and use of those systems by initiating RF linking to the Astro 21 Statewide project. To delay further the City's efforts to accommodate re-banding to the exclusion of the City's efforts toobtain Statewide interoperability on the State's 800 MHz network at the same time, would be to ignore an opportunity to concurrently re-band, while upgrading network capacity. Obviously, a two-step approach is both inefficient and more costly and does not provide to the City the next vital step toward improved and necessary interoperability.