Why Cops Don't Just Use Cell Phones

[Commentary] Police officers and firefighters carry $5,000 radios. Local and state governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build public safety radio networks. Yet today, cell phone networks seem to be everywhere, most people carry a mobile phone and many of us think paying $199 for an iPhone is expensive. Why can't cops, firefighters and emergency medical technicians (EMT) use cell phones like everyone else? Washington state legislator Reuven Carlyle from Seattle publicly argued recently for this approach in his blog. And at first, this appears to be a simple way for governments to save a lot of taxpayer dollars.

But here are a few reasons public safety officers need their own dedicated networks:
1) Cellular networks don't prioritize their users or traffic. 2) Public safety networks are more reliable than commercial cell phone networks. 3) Even small disasters cause cell phone networks to collapse. 4) A key feature of most government-operated networks is something called talk-around or simplex or "walkie-talkie" mode. In this mode, individual radios talk directly to each other, without using a radio or cell tower. This is very important at incident scenes. 5) No standard cell phone can survive the rigorous work of firefighting or policing.