Viewpoint
The ever increasing threat to public safety from terrorist attack, natural disaster, crime, and disease is driving governments to examine the use of cutting-edge information and communications technologies as they seek to establish advanced public safety telecom systems.
Currently, dedicated public safety networks adopt the narrow-band digital trunking technology, which is outdated uses low bandwidth and offers poor mobility. Narrow-band digital trunking can no longer meet the increasing needs of multi-media services on public safety networks and instead, LTE broadband trunking, offering high bandwidth and all IP-based operation, is becoming the mainstream in the market. It is the era of LTE-based public safety networks.
Operators are playing an increasingly important role in deploying public safety networks, developing more new services, and working with vertical industries to leverage the capacity advantage of LTE networks.
3GPP specifications pave the way for operators to deploy public safety networks.
Most public safety networks are deployed according to regional public safety standards, such as TETRA and P25. In recent years, 3GPP has been working with LMR (Land mobile radio) industry organizations, such as APCO (P25), ETST (TETRA), and TCCA, to develop public safety standards, ensuring 3GPP specifications are more applicable and making LTE networks more suitable to public safety communication. The Group Communications System Enabler for LTE (GCSE_LTE) defines how to achieve trunking communication on LTE networks, whilst Proximity Services (ProSE) define the communication mode for terminals disconnected from the network. Mission Critical Push-To-Talk (MCPTT) defines the one-push critical task function. These standards ensure that LTE networks are technically suitable for public safety communication.
Public safety network: the next blue ocean for operators
For governments, there are many advantages of leveraging operator networks to deploy public safety networks. Operator networks are cost-effective, and offer good coverage and capacity, allowing integrated and unified scheduling of professional voice, data, and HD video services on one terminal and one network. LTE technology ensures that public safety networks can achieve long term evolution. For operators, public safety networks will offer the opportunity to develop new services and expand business boundaries, at the same time making public safety networks more reliable and offering a better network experience for individual consumers.
The trend is clear, more governments are going to authorize operators to deploy national public safety networks, which in term will generate new revenue streams for the companies. In U.K., ESMCP has offered 2 billion pounds to EE for the deployment of LTE-based public safety networks to support police, fire, medical, and other public safety services. The network is planned to be put into trial commercial use by the end of 2016 and commercial use by H1 2017. In Korea, SKT has received USD $2 billion of funding from the government to deploy a national LTE public safety networks, which is expected to be commercially launched in 2017. PTS, a Swedish regulator, has announced that no dedicated spectrum will be allocated to public safety networks and suggests that public safety services should be supported by public LTE networks.
LTE-based public safety network: a mature industry chain
As LTE-based public safety communication and LTE trunking communication generates more attention globally, the LTE-based public safety industry is gaining momentum. There are more than 300 models of anti-surge, anti-moisture, and anti-theft LTE terminals in the market, with annual sales volumes in the millions and is growing rapidly. The diversity of LTE terminals satisfies the needs of customers in various industries.
There is a growing need for IT devices, such as LTE anti-surge, anti-moisture, and anti-theft smartphones, shoulder microphones, vehicle mounted stations, video surveillance devices, ECVs, drones, and detecting robots. A number of trunking server providers offer professional scheduling platforms and app. development services to different industries and business scenarios, meeting the need of public safety service customization.
Network encryption and information resistance technologies are also developing, often encompassing data encryption and related protection technologies, to prevent user information from being stolen or tampered and creating a safe network environment for users. As public safety develops and improves, the industry chain will involve more industries, such as smart transportation, air and water transportation, oil and drilling industries, logistics, security, and tourism.
Huawei, a leading global ICT provider has launched the LTE Integrated Trunked Radio Access (LiTRA) solution to help operators deploy secure, efficient, and professional LTE-based public safety networks. LiTRA can enable large bandwidth and low latency of LTE networks to provide professional multi-media trunking services such as video calls, video surveillance, file transfer, and coordinated geographic information systems, all offering an excellent experience compared with traditional trunking networks. More importantly, LiTRA is fully based on operators’ live LTE networks, significantly reducing network deployment and maintenance costs and providing better network coverage and roaming services. LiTRA is compatible with smart LTE terminals, opening up the industry chain to provide more professional and efficient trunking communications services.
Huawei is willing to open up networks for interconnection with other PTT platforms and terminals and join hands with industry partners to help operators deploy LTE-based public safety networks.
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