New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced that Northrop Grumman Corporation will be creating a Citywide Mobile Wireless Network (CMWN) for city agencies and public safety personnel. CMWN will give first responders from the Police Department (NYPD) and Fire Department (FDNY) high-speed data access to support large file transfers, including federal and state anti-crime and anti-terrorism databases, fingerprints, mug shots, city maps and full-motion streaming video said a press release from the mayor’s office.

“A Citywide Mobile Wireless Network was always going to be an eventual reality for establishing a state-of-the-art security and emergency management response system for New York City,” says Frost & Sullivan Industry Manager Karthik Nagarajan. “It is definitely the most aggressive by any municipality in the U.S. A robust wireless network backbone is the ideal way to leverage advances in video surveillance as well as other emergency response technologies. In the absence of such a network, the investment in technologies like intelligent camera systems or large search engines can be viewed as pointless.” The new wireless network, expected to be operational in lower Manhattan by the beginning of next year, will enable a paradigm shift in terms of the resources available to the city’s incident managers and first responder personnel.