First responders answer emergency calls daily and deal with situations where communications are critical. This includes communications with intra-agency peers and other first responder disciplines responding to an incident scene. When considering the advantages provided by current communications technology, it is unacceptable that officers from different agencies may not have the ability to share important information in the future.

The December quarterly Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) meetings in Sorrento, Italy, addressed standards in several areas relevant to mission-critical broadband in three separate plenary group meetings.

Marilyn Ward, executive director of the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC), shares her views on public-safety issues in this exclusive interview.

As shown by recent industry events, public-safety officials must hold commercial carriers accountable and not let the carriers take advantage of them.

After taking over the chief executive reigns of TCCA about a year ago, Tony Gray offers an update on how the past year has gone and his outlook for the coming year in this interview with RadioResource International magazine.

The effective delivery of critical communications is crucial to ensuring public safety and to enabling businesses to protect personnel and property during major planned and unplanned events. At the dawn of the fourth industrial revolution, the industry is looking to see how 5G, big data, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) can be harnessed to further enhance critical communications in the context of an ever-changing technological landscape.

Many have criticized the Project 25 (P25) standards suite for various reasons — slow to develop and high cost, among others. However, one P25 standard, the Inter RF Subsystem Interface (ISSI), looks likely to play a large role in the integration of legacy networks with Long Term Evolution (LTE) and mission-critical push to talk (MCPTT).

The National Association of State Procurement Officers (NASPO) ValuePoint (NVP) public-safety communications equipment contract, led by the state of Washington, is preparing to rebid the nationwide public-safety communications equipment cooperative contract.

Like many in public safety, I’ve been watching with great interest as manufacturers develop new and improved devices intended for use on public-safety networks that expand on previous versions’ functionality, survivability and overall suitability. Device features such as improved ruggedness, user-replaceable batteries and positive-locking accessory side connectors are major improvements as device manufacturers zero in on products that will work in the public-safety world.

Both AT&T and Verizon announced plans for their respective public-safety Long Term Evolution (LTE) cores this week. Public-safety agencies now have the task of deciding which broadband data service best suits their needs.