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Telco teams up with Nokia and Finland’s public safety network provider to test prioritisation of mission-critical communications.
Telia Finland on Wednesday successfully trialled the prioritisation of mission-critical communications traffic over an LTE network.
First responders are keen to make use of high-speed mobile networks to support richer forms of communication, such as video, in addition to traditional voice comms. Of course, these services need to be ultra-reliable, so it is important that first-responder network traffic takes priority over consumer traffic.
Telia, in partnership with kit maker Nokia and Finland’s public safety network provider, State Security Networks Group, successfully trialled the use of Nokia’s traffic management technology in a variety of scenarios.
The trials pave the way for the gradual migration from Finland’s legacy TETRA network to commercial LTE networks.
"Although the current TETRA-based network will be in use for some time, we have now started working with commercial operators to lay the foundation for delivering public safety communication with LTE and future generation technologies," said Sami Orakoski, COO of State Security Networks Group, in a statement.
"Everyone understands the importance of public safety communication in exceptional circumstances," added Pasi Mehtonen, head of operator business, Telia Finland. "The successful trials show that by combining advanced technology know-how, together with deep experience of providing mission-critical services we can pave the way for future solutions."
In one situation, emergency comms traffic was successfully prioritised during an ice hockey match at a large sports venue.
"The test results show that we can prioritise public safety communication over an LTE network, even when that network is extremely busy," said Tommi Uitto, head of global product sales, Mobile Networks, at Nokia. "We can use this insight to accelerate the adoption of LTE-based public safety applications, not only here in Finland, but across the globe."
