lyyStandards needed to merge public-safety, commercial architectures
Last week, Alcatel-Lucent and EADS Defense and Security announced a collaboration to develop new public-safety technologies by combining the standards in both the land-mobile radio and commercial wireless realms into a single joint solution. The vision of the emergency communications platform is to combine AlcaLu’s LTE — the commercial technology backed by public safety for a nationwide mobile broadband network — and existing Project 25 standards to push interoperability between disparate local, state and federal agencies.
Alcatel Lucent will provide the LTE radio access infrastructure, data packet core, service-delivery architecture and backhaul elements — all based on the 3GPP standards but optimized for the frequencies used by public-safety agencies. Meanwhile, EADS will integrate its existing LMR technology with the 4G platform, creating what amounts to an emergency radio network with an all-IP, mobile broadband overlay. EADS also will supply the radio/LTE terminals and optimize its public-safety applications for the LTE network. The two plan to target the platform first at 700 MHz, the band occupied by both digital LMR systems and the first U.S. LTE networks.
It’s a development that makes sense. Public safety simply has different requirements than the commercial sector. But I also wonder if this becomes another expensive proprietary solution. Will standards be required? Will we see other similar partnerships? I’m waiting to understand what Motorola proposes for the marriage between LTE and P25 networks. Motorola is pushing hard on the LTE side in places like China and Japan. Its expertise in both public safety and LTE makes it a powerful player.
Just because the legislative details haven’t been worked out doesn’t mean standards and other technical issues can’t be hammered out now. It’s clear that public safety will be using LTE in the 700 MHz band, and the last thing the industry wants are more proprietary solutions.
What do you think? Tell us in the comment box below.