In critical times, communication can be the key to helping a town get through a crisis.
At the most recent Lapel town council meeting, the board approved adopting AT&T’s FirstNet, a premium high-speed wireless service, as a communication service for town employees.
FirstNet is a government-only service offered to help council members, police officers, firefighters and other town personnel communicate during a disaster.
“The ability that FirstNet provides the utilities, police and fire of this town is tremendous because, God forbid, anything happen to this town that happened in Pendleton last year, this gives us the ability for our phones to work even when other people’s phones aren’t working,” town council member Tom Marvel said. “(With FirstNet) we can communicate, utilities can communicate, fire can communicate, police can communicate on top of our radio system and everything else.