After the disastrous World Trade Organization meeting in 1999, the city of Seattle canceled future international conferences that had any hint of controversy. One group forced to relocate was the Asian Development Bank, which selected Honolulu as its new meeting venue. The site change left the Honolulu Police Department (HPD) with a compressed time-frame to plan for potential disruptions related to the conference. Among the department’s most pressing considerations was its backup communications
center, located in cramped basement quarters across the street from and on the same utility grid as the police headquarters.

The department had to relocate and improve the alternate center so it could provide security, reliability and flexibility. Building a duplicate communications center was not an option, given the short time-frame, nor was it economically feasible.

HPD’s communications division is not small. Part of the country’s 11th-largest police department, the division has 192 employees who communicate with approximately 2,000 officers across Oahu. After reviewing the available options, HPD chose IP Radio, a new technology that uses Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in combination with radio.

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