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City of El Paso Selects Federal Engineering for 800 MHz Rebanding
FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA, June 1, 2015 — The City of El Paso, TX has selected Federal Engineering, Inc. (FE) to support the reconfiguration and rebanding of its 800 MHz public safety communications system.
Mr. Edward Ozogar, Project Manager for the El Paso Department of Information Technology Services indicated: “In July 2004, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted a staged plan to reorganize the 800 MHz band in order to minimize interference to public safety radio systems caused by commercial wireless systems. This plan, now often referred to as 800 MHz rebanding, requires that Sprint (formerly Nextel) provide funds for affected licensees to reconfigure their systems and that each relocated licensee realizes ‘comparable facilities’ at the end of the reconfiguration process.”
Mr. Ozogar continued: “El Paso requires technical assistance and programmatic support for the specific requirements of rebanding and requires technical oversight of radio vendor provided services. The City has retained the services of Federal Engineering to manage the implementation of reconfiguration plans developed during the previous planning phase of this project. Federal Engineering has been providing radio-consulting services to the City since 2010. The firm is thoroughly familiar with our existing systems and our unique needs and has consistently exceeded our expectations.”
Mr. Ronald F. Bosco, FE’s President, provided a vignette of the project: “Federal Engineering will perform the following duties for the City:
- Act as the primary project coordinator for rebanding reconfiguration activities.
- Coordinate the preparation of required forms with Sprint and the City project team for filing with the FCC and the Transition Authority, the Federal Government oversight body for 800 MHz rebanding.
- Work with the reconfiguration services vendors to review, audit, and verify the replacement, retuning, reprogramming and reconfiguration of the City owned infrastructure and subscriber devices as required to complete the reconfiguration efforts.
- Facilitate communication between necessary parties in this process.
- Audit baseline system measurements, reconfiguration, and acceptance testing of rebanded systems, and develop a comparable facilities assessment.
FE has been supporting rebanding efforts for over a decade and our participation will ensure a seamless rebanding experience for El Paso.”
Federal Engineering provides analysis, design, procurement, and implementation support for NG9-1-1, PSAPs, ECCs, and EOCs. These services complement FE’s wide range of consulting services in public safety and public service communications involving LTE as well as traditional VHF, UHF, 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz and 4.9GHz mobile radio systems. Since 1983, FE has completed thousands of communications projects for 40 state governments, as well as numerous local and federal government clients. Most recently, FE has expanded its services to support FirstNet planning in anticipation of the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network.
In addition to its public sector work, Federal Engineering provides design and implementation support services for voice, data, and video networks used in the transportation, utilities, aerospace, finance, education, publishing, and computer services industries. FE’s certified independence ensures that clients receive objective, unbiased consulting services that are not influenced by any particular technology, product, vendor, or approach.