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GOING DIGITAL: PNP eyes P1.2-B gadgets to help fight crime, terrorism

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Gerry Lirio, ABS-CBN News

<p>FINALLY, the Philippine National Police is going digital.</p><p>The PNP is rushing an ambitious digital communication system project worth P1.2 billion meant to help secure events involving a mammoth crowd, a huge delegation of foreign dignitaries, including U.S. President Trump in the Asean leaders’ summit in November this year, or to help prevent a terror attack all together.</p><p>The modernization project was divided into two phases.</p><p>On May 31, the PNP accepted proposals to the second half but bigger part of the project—worth P819.1 million.</p><p>It came two months after the PNP opened the table for pre-bidding of the first part worth P359.6 million, on March 31.</p><div><strong>Napolcom’s project</strong></div><p>Until last week, it was not clear how many bidders did the PNP attract for the twin projects covered by a series of resolutions signed by officials of the National Police Commission, including former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas and his predecessor Ismael Sueno, between 2012 and 2016. The DILG secretary sits as Napolcom chair.</p><p>The PNP hoped that the winning bidder could deliver some of the gadgets in time for the November summit to be attended by Trump, arguably the world’s most controversial, high-security risk leader, and officials of the 10-member Asean countries who last came together in ceremonies held smoothly, security-wise, in late April, at the Philippine International Convention Complex.</p><div><strong>Less sophisticated?</strong></div><p>Budget and police officials sent bidding notices sometime between February and March this year for the twin projects, first conceptualized during the Estrada administration when the world first saw digitalization and was given the imprimatur by Roxas in 2015. Until after Sueno affixed his signature, several months before President Duterte fired him in April, did the projects get off the ground.</p><p>And apart from the monumental bureaucratic delays, the projects have lumbered amid criticisms that the communication system the PNP wanted installed was “less sophisticated” than the analog system it used at the Asia-Pacific Economic leaders’ summit attended by U.S. President Bill Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin among others in Subic Bay Freeport in November 1996.</p><p>The critics might have all been exaggerating.</p><p>The project would allow PNP to go digital, all right. The analog system has become passe. To go digital is the next best thing.</p><div><strong>Digital, but not LTE</strong></div><p>Yet for all the excitement it has generated, the PNP’s much-awaited communication project is not going to use LTE--or long-term evolution--for the two projects. Not yet, anyway. Which has probably fueled the criticisms. The reason: That P1.2-billion budget wouldn’t be enough to fund an LTE infrastructure.</p><p>(LTE is a standard for high-speed wireless communication for mobile phones and data terminals. It increases the capacity and speed using a different radio interface together with core network improvements.)</p><p>“To go LTE is like putting up an entire structure like that of Smart or Globe, which they’ve put up over several years,” said police Chief Inspector Berniel Gotoman, of the PNP-Communication and Electronics Service.</p><p>“That would be very costly, we can’t afford that. Later on, we may consider riding in with a telecom company, like what a broadcast company has done. It has its own line, but the infrastructure is Globe-provided. But, we are still studying some security issues,” he said.</p><div><strong>Fewer cops, fewer gadgets</strong></div><p>For all the limitations of the twin projects, Gotoman said, the police force needs the new gadgets badly.</p><p>The 160,000-strong national police has been relying on 18,000 units of analog radio, an old and phased-out technology. The police’s analog trunking system has already been experiencing failures.</p><p>After years of neglect and budgetary constraints, this policeman-to-gadget ratio has gone bad-—and has seemingly become impossible to achieve--as the existing ratio of one-policeman-for-every-600-people in a nation of over 100 million spread over 7,000 islands.</p><p>The twin projects were the result of years of study, said Gotoman, in assessing the needs of the PNP in the hope of improving the speed and quality of its crime and disaster response.</p><p>“This is it,” said Gotoman, the PNP’s “focal person” as Gen. Benjamin De Sagun, chief of PNP-Communication and Electronics Service, described him on the twin projects. “We have been waiting for it the past many years.”</p><p>The projects are expected to greatly improve the PNP strength to serve through an improved communication system, even long after the Trump-led November summit, he said.</p><div><strong>Analog radio to provinces?</strong></div><p>Based on documents obtained by ABS-CBN News, the PNP would like the new gadgets from the P1.2-billion fund to be compatible with the 18,000 analog radio system.</p><p>Why? The authorities want to keep them because they can still be useful in rural areas. The new gadgets would be made available in Metro Manila and other urban</p><p>centers, effectively augmenting the police-to-gadget ratio.</p><p>“That’s why we want our analog radio to be compatible with the new gadgets,” he said.</p><div><strong>From voice to data</strong></div><p>Aside from the digital-analog compatibility, according to the documents, the PNP needs the gadgets to have support functionalities such as open standard, interoperability with different brand/manufacturer, GPS tracking, text messaging, different types of voice calls, emergency call/alarm, call priority feature, clear audio, dynamic group number assignment, all of which couldn’t be found in the current PNP analog radio system.</p><p>On top of these, the new gadgets the job description of the end-user security features, data application, dispatch, network management, command center, voice and data recording, IP networking, and telephone interconnection, he said.</p><div><strong>Secured communication system</strong></div><p>Most of all, said Gotoman, the new PNP telecom gadgets should have “high level encryption for secure and mission critical communication,” because of the nature of police work.</p><p>All these features are nothing new, for even a foot soldier or any ordinary person can have these using an LTE mobile phone, except that indeed the PNP, as an organization, still uses the analog system.</p><div><strong>Gadget like no other</strong></div><p>Given the new gadgets, Gotoman said, the police response time to crime and disasters would be faster. He envisioned a police officer swiping the driver’s license of a traffic offender in a gadget that can provide him at once the offender’s criminal record--or the lack of it-all at once.</p><p>Or a police colleague making an SOS for reinforcement when a crime is in progress. “To neutralize a crime, to respond to any person in need, it would be much easier for the police to serve,” he said.</p><div><strong>PNP’s choice</strong></div><p>All these specifications, according to Gotoman, fit well within the Digital Mobile Radio (DMR), a digital radio standard developed by European Telecommunication Standard Institute (ETSI)</p><p>And this is the second contentious issue critics of the new PNP communication system have raised.</p><p>Why DMR? There are two other standards currently classified as of public safety grade—ETSI’s terrestrial trunked radio, or Tetra, and American system APCO’s Project 25.</p><p>A public-safety standard based is essential in linking various agencies, according to an industry source. Unified mission critical communications technology allows the government to deliver public safety services and essential tools in managing disaster recovery.</p><div><strong>Critics’ choice</strong></div><p>While Tetra and Apco could deliver this facility to the police, the DMR might not, a paper circulated during a pre-bidding said.</p><p>In 2015, the PNP noted the advancement on these systems and have worked with various technology vendors to study and enhance their critical infrastructure design.</p><p>Because of this, the PNP has successfully approved the most advanced public safety standard based through a uniform equipment standard board resolution outlining the minimum specification requirement for the bidding.</p><p>In 2016, Napolcom made another resolution outlining the DMR standard, which, critics said, was a step lower than the prior approved resolution</p><div><strong>Why DMR?</strong></div><p>In a budget presentation shared with ABS-CBN News, Gotoman detailed why the DMR is the best technology for the PNP requirements by comparing the three standards.</p><p>“The requirements must drive the solution,” he told ABS-CBN News in an interview, noting the disavantages posed by the two other standards.</p><div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2017/news/06/08/going-digital-table1.png"/></figure></div><p>The DMR, Gotoman said, is the “latest technology that can address all the disadvantages of Tetra and P25, top among them is the compatibility with PNP’s existing analog system, the high cost of acquiring P25 and Tetra technology, though details of the prices were not readily available, and the DMR’s far-reaching capacity geographically.</p><div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2017/news/06/08/going-digital-table2.jpg?ext=.jpg"/></figure></div><div><strong>Nothing should stop digital</strong></div><p>No critics, Gotoman said, can stop the PNP from going digital. He recalled how the PNP-CES has remained backward the past many years, but remained true and steadfast rising to the occasion fighting crimes.</p><p>On its website, the PNP-Communications and Electronics Service traced its humble beginnings at the turn of the 20th century from the American expedition forces, which played a very vital role in securing Philippine independence and the maintenance of the peace and order.</p><p>In the beginning, the group called the “Signal Corps” was a ragtag gang that aided military operations through communications systems and facilities.</p><p>The group’s accomplishment in providing vital communication to police and military operations gave credence to its own adage: “The (communication) corps does not claim to have won any war but no major war has ever been won without the (communication) corps.”</p><p>“Still, we need this modern communication system,” he said.</p>

GOING DIGITAL: PNP eyes P1.2-B gadgets to help fight crime, terrorism

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GOING DIGITAL: PNP eyes P1.2-B gadgets to help fight crime, terrorism

Gerry Lirio,

ABS-CBN News

Published July 08, 2017 05:28 AM PHT

Read More:

PNP

communications

technology

encryption

security

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