Avtec discusses the importance of open standards

Public-safety users will have to wait until the first quarter of next year to experience push-to-talk service compliant with the mission-critical-push-to-talk (MCPTT) standard on the FirstNet system, according to AT&T, the contractor tasked with building and maintaining the nationwide public-safety broadband network (NPSBN). AT&T yesterday provided the push-to-talk update as part of a press release […]

Secure voice communications can be delivered using 3GPP’s mission-critical-push-to-talk (MCPTT) standard across solutions provided by multiple vendors, according to tests recently announced by Bittium, Athonet, Nemergent and the Mission Critical Open Platform (MCOP) project. Fidel Liberal, coordinator for MCOP, said the testing—conducted this fall at the ETSI MCX plugtests event in Finland—is a big step […]

Terry Burnworth, president of Pyramid Consulting Services, explains the challenges that 911 centers–particularly smaller centers in rural areas–face as 911 transitions from a voice-centric operation to one that needs to process data, photos and video from a variety of sources, including IoT sensors, surveillance cameras and witnesses at an incident scene. On Dec. 11 at […]

FCC commissioners yesterday voted to approve rules requiring wireless carriers to deliver 911 callers’ vertical location that is accurate within three meters in most cases, but critics expressed concern that the location information will not be provided in a manner that is useful to public safety. Under the new order, vertical—or Z-axis—80% of indoor wireless […]