Project Summary: Emergency first responders, such as police officers, firefighters, and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) personnel, must be able to communicate with each other to provide effective disaster response. However, a lack of interoperable communications systems and technologies has plagued emergency first responders for generations. There is no standard definition of interoperable communications, but public safety officials generally recognize interoperable communications as the ability to talk with whom they want, when they want, and when authorized, but not the ability to talk with everyone all of the time. During the responses to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York on September 11, 2001, and numerous other incidents, police officers were unable to communicate directly with other first responders from their own or other jurisdictions. Unfortunately, there is no quick or easy solution to this problem. The federal government has tried, w