The International Association of Fire Chiefs responded to criticism of its recently released handbook that describes use of Nextel Communications' push-to-talk service and 800MHZ trunking as effective methods to achieve interoperable communications.

“Top Priority: The Fire Service Guide to Interoperable Communications” was developed with support from Nextel Communications. Interoperability is a critical issue affecting the ability to deliver emergency services, yet it continues to be an elusive goal for most fire and EMS organizations, according to the IAFC.

“Interoperability is essential to operability,” said Bill Pessemier, the handbook's author and a retired fire chief in Littleton, Colo.

Steve Rauter, deputy chief of the Lisle-Woodridge (Ill.) Fire District, said the document places far too much emphasis on Nextel and 800MHZ trunking: “In the Chicago metro area, our experience is that Nextel is not a reliable mission-critical tool that you can use to do all of the stuff that [the handbook] suggests.”

There also is a debate in the aftermath of Nextel's merger with Sprint, as to how long Motorola will continue to support iDEN, the PTT platform used by Nextel to provide its Direct Connect Service, Rauter said.

Rauter is equally concerned about the emphasis on 800MHZ trunking, which he said Washington is hard-selling to the nation's fire chiefs as something they must have to achieve interoperability.

“We have done preliminary channel-loading studies on this already that indicate there is not enough spectrum available in 800 and 700 to facilitate interoperability [via trunking] for every agency in the state of Illinois,” Rauter said.

There are other concerns. Wayne Drown, chief of the Silver Bluffs Volunteer Fire Department in Aiken County, S.C., categorized trunking systems as the “most costly answer to interoperability problems.”

Pessemier said the handbook “clearly is not written solely from an 800MHZ perspective,” although it presents three case studies based on 800MHZ technology.

Pessemier also said the IAFC's position is that Nextel's Direct Connect service is just fine as a supplemental service but is not endorsed as a replacement for a primary land mobile radio system, something that is made clear on page 15 of the handbook.

“There are some places that have experimented with [Nextel as a replacement service], and they're pretty happy with it, but it's not something the IAFC is endorsing,” he said.

Pessemier added that it's only natural that Nextel is mentioned prominently in the handbook because the carrier is “out in front” of other commercial wireless carriers in terms of providing products, services or capacities for public safety.

“What we've told people is that, if Nextel works for you, great, use them. If somebody else works for you, use them.”

Susan Kalish, IAFC director of corporate marketing, said that while Nextel paid for the printing and promotion, the carrier had no involvement in the content creation. Kalish also noted that that the IAFC shopped the project to other potential sponsors, but Nextel was the only one to step up.

“Interoperability has been a problem for a long time, and the IAFC has wanted to do something like [the handbook] for a long time but never had the resources,” she said. “So this seemed like a perfect fit to get outside support to put together educational materials.”

The 32-page handbook provides discusses the foundation for interoperable communications and provides direction to establish interoperability between and among public safety services.

A free copy of the handbook is available at www.iafc.org/home/nextel_handbook.asp.