Survey: U.S. Public Safety IT Market Expected to Grow to $21.3 Billion by 2011

According to research from CompassIntelligence.com, public safety organizations in the U.S. will spend roughly $21.3 billion on IT goods and services by 2011. This year the U.S. public safety market (Including fire, police, and EMT departments) is expected to spend roughly $17.4 billion on information technology including telecom, applications, outsourcing, services/support, network hardware, computer hardware, and IT personnel. This market is expected to experience a slight decline with single-digit annual growth into 2011 and will finally pick up growth in 2011.

Major growth areas include wireless data, which requires more advanced networks and greater bandwidth. Emergency workers are increasingly using PDAs, laptops, and mobile data terminals and utilizing these devices as a source of access to secure the public and get timely emergency information. "This market represents almost a third of the state and local government market and continues to be a hot area for wireless data and next generation broadband," says Stephanie Atkinson, managing partner at Compass Intelligence.


 Research highlights include:

• Telecom services and equipment is expected to be the largest spending segment by the PS market, about 39 percent of the market driven by wireless data and equipment needs
• The applications segment is predicted to be the fastest growing segment and reach $4.4 billion by 2011.
• The police segment represent about 74 percent of the public safety market IT spend, followed by the fire and EMT segments.