Vertical Applications
- Public Safety -

Overview
Public safety refers to those services that contribute
to the safety of public in our society. In the mobile computing and wireless
segment of technology, there are three major areas that are covered by this
term:
- law enforcement activities associated with
municipal, state or federal police agencies
- fire emergencies
- emergency medical services (EMS) -
ambulance dispatch
Public Safety - A Legacy Wireless
Application
Because of the nature of their work,
public safety agencies such as police, fire safety and ambulance
services were justified in employing radio networks and implementing
mobile computing applications long before they could be
cost-justified in the private sector. Vendors such as Motorola
worked closely with public agencies and terminal manufacturers like
MDI (which Motorola eventually acquired) to design customized
end-to-end systems that used proprietary radio network technology
for the following applications:
- CAD for police, fire and ambulance
vehicles
- Queries to local police databases
and state/provincial transport systems for vehicle and driver
information;
- Records management (in some cases,
on site, right in vehicles)
Early applications were implemented
on mini-computers such as DEC VAX and mainframes such as IBM, UNISYS
and Tandem. Hardware used in the vehicles was pre-PC, with limited
intelligence and storage for store screen formats only. This was
done to conserve radio network bandwidth, which was typically 2400
bps in the early ’80s.
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