CHARLOTTE -- When a patient is being driven in an ambulance, doctors at a hospital could get a first look at the person's condition by using streaming video.
As firefighters are driving to a fire, they could watch video of the fire in action and review building blueprints. If a police officer pulls someone over, a video camera would not only record the traffic stop - but other officers could watch it live at headquarters.
The city of Charlotte learned last week that it has been awarded a $16.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce to build such a system, which will be one of the first of its kind in the nation.
The broadband grant will give the city and Mecklenburg County their own 4G network, allowing them to bypass commercial carriers. The city's manager for network technology services, Dennis Baucom, said the wireless network will be almost as fast as being plugged in.
"With that kind of speed, an ambulance could send video of a patient and their vital signs to the ER, while they are in transit," Baucom said. "That's a huge shift in the potential to save lives."
Charlotte Deputy Fire Chief Jeff Dulin said the system will improve firefighting.
"If there is a chemical spill, we can push that image out," Dulin said. "The guys [responding] can see what's going on."
Emergency responders have some wireless capability today. Police officers, for instance, can check criminal records on laptops in their patrol cars.
But the system is often slow because it's shared with regular cell phone users.
"Now we are on commercial carriers, and your pipe can go really small on you," he said. "During the Iceland/Mexico soccer game [at Bank of America Stadium] we had so many people using cell phones, our carriers shut down for us."
Baucom said the network is one of the latest in a decade-long series of improvements to police and fire communications, much of it sparked by the Sept. 11 attacks, when New York fire fighters and police officers couldn't communicate with one another.
Nine years ago, the city of Charlotte improved communications for police and firefighters and has been studying how to give emergency responders access to more data.
The city will chip in $4 million to help pay for the system. The city will begin building and testing the system downtown and expand it over the next several years.
