Cisco and JPS Communications Collaborate to Provide IP Interoperability Solution for Emergency First Responders

Session Initiation Protocol extends to support radio-over- IP interfaces to help enable faster emergency response

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Cisco today announced an agreement with JPS Communications to market an integrated local and wide-area communications solution to dramatically improve interoperability for emergency first responders in local, state and federal public safety agencies. The solution is available today.

Integrating the Raytheon JPS ACU-2000 IP interoperability gateway with the Cisco IP Interoperability and Collaboration System (IPICS) solution combines the easy to use, on-the-fly configuration capabilities of the ACU-2000IP that are vital to seamless tactical and local interoperability, with the wide area, IP-enabled interoperability strengths of Cisco IPICS.

The integration is enabled by the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), an open industry standard that is being advanced specifically to support radio-over-IP interfaces and bring different radio systems together to support radio interoperability over an IP network.

During emergency as well as normal operations, first responders such as police, fire and rescue teams require diverse communication devices, located at multiple sites, to operate together to share information. The integrated solution further extends traditional interoperable communications across agencies, suppliers and technologies by taking advantage of an open-standards platform. This collaborative approach will allow an officer to use his or her IP desk phone, for example, to communicate with personnel in multiple locations at the same time, accessing a hand-held radio, IP device, telephone, cellular phone, or personal computer. This scalable solution will provide public sector agencies and enterprises the highest level of efficiency so appropriate resources can execute streamlined operations and respond rapidly and more efficiently to any incident.

“With the ACU-2000 IP and Cisco IPICS, customers can benefit from JPS’ best-in-class radio interface capability and Cisco’s proven networking expertise in an open-standards platform,” said Keith McDonald, vice president of sales and marketing for JPS Communications. “This helps enable seamless communications with many devices, which have previously not been able to interface with one another, to ensure highly reliable, real-time local and wide-area interoperable communications and enhance operational effectiveness.”

Mark Weidick, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s safety and security systems business unit added, “Using the combined solution, customers can achieve interoperability today in a cost-effective manner while protecting their investment in existing radio networks.”

The Cisco IPICS portfolio of products and applications streamlines daily operations and helps enable organizations to rapidly respond to incidents or emergencies. It dissolves communication silos between disparate land mobile radio systems and devices such as mobile phones, landline phones, IP phones and PC clients. Users can communicate with whatever device they have, from wherever they are. Users can be paged or emailed with the status of an event and can be automatically called and invited to join the virtual conference, further improving situation awareness and reducing response time. Cisco IPICS provides flexible and scalable communications interoperability, enhancing the value of existing and new radio, telephony and IP communications networks.

For more information about Cisco IPICS, visit: www.cisco.com/go/ipics.