City wireless network went haywire and was inoperable for a week

NY Post


City Hall’ s tech czar ignored a federal warning about a looming, Y2K-like software bug last year — allowing a crash of the city’s official wireless network that has been down since the weekend, sources told The Post.

As a result, transit officials can’t remotely control the Big Apple’s 12,000-plus traffic lights, and many of the city’s traffic cameras and NYPD license-plate readers are down, sources said.

“This is a big screw-up, even for the de Blasio administration,” said a source familiar with the matter.

The New York City Wireless Network, known as “NYCWiN,” crashed on Saturday, affecting the operations of city agencies that rely on it to transmit high-speed voice, video and data communications.

Workers have been scrambling around the clock to fix the entirely preventable problem, but the network remained down Wednesday — five days into the outage.

NYCWiN is overseen by the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, whose commissioner, Samir Saini, was appointed by Mayor de Blasio in January 2018.

DoITT pays the Northrop Grumman Corp. about $40 million a year to run the network, which cost $500 million to build and went into service citywide in 2009.

It was unclear when it would be back up and running. But what is reasonably certain is that the technology snafu could have been prevented.

Exactly one year ago Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning that GPS-enabled devices could be affected by a time counter “rollover event” set to occur this past Saturday.
DHS noted that testing showed some devices could not “correctly handle” the rollover and urged “federal, state, local, and private sector organizations” to take preventive measures.

Sources said the biggest impact has been on the Department of Transportation, which lost its digital connection to the traffic lights at intersections across the city — leaving officials unable to know if a signal stops working unless someone reports it.

In addition, the clocks that time the lights are subject to going out of sync, which could wreck the carefully timed patterns that keep traffic flowing, sources said.

“I don’t know how the city could become more congested, but that would be a concern,” one law enforcement source said.

 This doesn't bode well for the coming congestion pricing tolling system the city is going to implement next year.

That "vital communications system" isn't so vital

From the Daily News:

TWO YEARS after unveiling a $549 million public-safety wireless data network that the NYPD and FDNY have been slow to embrace, the Bloomberg administration tried and failed to sell it back to its builder.

Bloomberg aides approached the defense giant Northrop Grumman last year about purchasing the system, dubbed the New York City Wireless Network (NYCWiN), and then leasing it back to the city.

Since its launch in 2009, NYCWiN has attracted far fewer users than its capacity, and the system is costing more than $38 million annually to maintain, documents obtained by the Daily News show.

The city made the offer during negotiations on a new five-year contract for Northrop to service the system, a spokesman for the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications confirmed this week.

But the company rejected the concept and opted instead for another $200 million contract just to maintain the system for the next five years.

So why would City Hall want to sell a network it has trumpeted as assuring vital public-safety data in case of another natural disaster or terrorist attack?

Well, officials are reluctant to admit it, but its public safety agencies aren’t exactly embracing NYCWiN.

So we're being microwaved by city-owned towers for nothing? Who got rich off this contract?

NYCWIN more like a loss

From the NY Post:

After five years and more than $500 million spent, the Bloomberg administration has bought itself yet another complex high-tech system that simply doesn’t live up to the hype.

Conceived as a secure wireless network for city agencies, including cops, firefighters and building inspectors, the New York City Wireless Network -- dubbed NYCWiN -- was pitched as a futuristic system like the high-tech gadgets from the TV show “24.”

Under the plans, crews racing to an emergency would have at their fingertips a treasure trove of data ranging from live video feeds to the timing of Midtown traffic lights.

While city officials insist the $535 million system that went operational in 2009 is a success, critics are quick to point out that it is falling far short of expectations.

Among the things the network can’t do are:

* Transmit blueprints and building plans to firefighters and firetrucks.

* Send mug shots to police in their cars or as they walk the beat.

* Function inside most Big Apple buildings.

Flagpole is more than meets the eye

Here we have a HUGE flagpole that is twice the height of the Fresh Pond Crematory which doubles as a communications tower for city agencies. And I understand they will be installing a bunch more of these throughout the City. No lights on the flag at night as promised, however, when I passed by last week.