News
FirstNet officials criticize efforts to establish mission-critical-voice standard outside of 3GPP
WESTMINSTER, COLO.—FirstNet officials yesterday were outspoken in voicing their displeasure with an attempt by some vendors to establish a mission-critical-voice standard via the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) instead of going through 3GPP, the global standards body for LTE technology.
WESTMINSTER, COLO.—FirstNet officials yesterday were outspoken in voicing their displeasure with an attempt by some vendors to establish a mission-critical-voice standard via the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) instead of going through 3GPP, the global standards body for LTE technology.
FirstNet board member Kevin McGinnis focused attention on the matter during the Technology Committee meeting, when he stated that mission-critical voice via LTE remains “quite a ways off” but has been the subject of considerable progress within 3GPP. Indeed, 3GPP has prioritized key components of mission-critical voice—notably, push-to-talk capability and peer-to-peer communications—to be included in releases 12 and 13 of LTE.
“It’s one of the areas that we’ve made some really fine progress in over the last few years,” McGinnis said during the committee meeting, which was open to the public. “The PSCR (Public Safety Communications Research) staff … has traveled the world over, going to 3GPP meetings and going from a point where we thought public safety was going to be buried under a whole bunch of commercial concerns and we’d never get anything done. Three or four years later, we’re right at the top. Push to talk is in play, and direct-mode [communications] is being talked about, and there are other features, as well, and I really want to commend the PSCR staff for that.
“But right as I say that, I understand that there is a move afoot by certain vendors to take the process of developing standards in these areas to whole different standards body—OMA, I think it’s called. To me, that would be tremendously distracting when we’re making progress in these areas, which upsets me as a public-safety professional.”
Ali Afrashteh, FirstNet’s new chief technology officer (CTO), echoed this sentiment, noting that he had made similar statements to the Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC) earlier in the day.
“We are requesting and want to tell certain vendors to support us to push for accelerating of these types of features and functionality in 3GPP rather than doing it in some other organization,” Afrashteh said during the Technology Committee meeting.
After the committee meeting, McGinnis reiterated his disappointment with the effort to pursue mission-critical voice standards through OMA.
“I’m told that they want to move it to a standards body where those vendors presumably have more influence,” McGinnis said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. McGinnis said he does not know which vendors are pushing the OMA initiative but described the effort as “distracting, and it detracts from the progress we’ve made [in the 3GPP standards process].”
Note to FirstNet Board and
Note to FirstNet Board and Staff –
Lead, Follow, or Get the Hell Out of the Way!
You just might not have all the answers.
I think there is a bit of
I think there is a bit of paranoia here. It is easy to go to the Open Mobile Alliance page and figure out who has what in the PoC world. I do not believe the suspect vendor has anything there since all their (commercial) PTT solutions have so far been proprietary. In fact, practically all major commercial PTT offerings are proprietary and OMA-PoC has not had the success expected. However, OMA-PoC has a certain advantage which is a large body of specs which could be leveraged as an application layer on top of LTE mechanisms together with IMS. 3GPP will not solve it all and they typically focus on lower layers. A joint 3GPP-OMA effort to look at the overlapping tasks if any would be more productive.
On another note, while the PSCR efforts are applauded, PSCR would have a difficult time without the support of vendors. We should stop painting vendors with a wide brush let alone when they are the ones where innovation, development and manufacturing take place.
Does FirstNet intend for 3GPP
Does FirstNet intend for 3GPP to re-invent the effort that has been expended for PTT by OMA? 3GPP is concerned with core network capabilities and not application layer functionality. Understanding MCPTT requirements that apply for Core Network is all that 3GPP should consider.
As Communication Director at
As Communication Director at OMA, I would like to address a few points in the above article.
• OMA and its members are not attempting to create Public Safety standards that compete with the work ongoing at 3GPP. OMA has an active Liaison relationship with 3GPP and have bilaterally agreed with 3GPP to coordinate and collaborate with 3GPP on this work. The Liaison communication stream is very active and collaborative. OMA has a number of similar collaboration agreements with 3GPP and other standards setting bodies. Such agreements are a common practice among technical standards setting bodies and help ensure the highest quality specifications possible are brought to the market.
• The Public Safety work ongoing at OMA is an evolution of a standard called OMA POC (Push-to-Talk over Cellular) which is a standard that already exists, was developed collaboratively with 3GPP and is deployed commercially in the market, e.g. in the U.S and Canada. OMA is updating POC to address Public Safety requirements (as “Push Communications for Public Safety”, PCPS), thereby reducing the time it will take to create and deploy Push-to-Talk services supporting FirstNet’s requirements. PCPS also operates with any transport technology, which will be critical during and after Public Safety and Critical Communications networks transition from narrowband to broadband solutions.
• 3GPP and OMA have collaborated for many years, with OMA having primary responsibility for application-layer standards for service enablers, due to the expertise of its members and domain of work. We believe that OMA is the right forum for work on Push-to-Talk for Public Safety as the work to be done deals primarily with the service layer.
• OMA is an international standards setting body with members from every region in the world. The working groups consider the input of many members. FirstNet’s requirements are vitally important to the work of the group, as are requirements arising from government agencies in other regions.
• OMA has made special provision to allow the government agencies including FirstNet to participate in the work of OMA, and FirstNet is currently one of several OMA Governmental Agency Participants. Since FirstNet and other government agencies have initiated a focus on Public Safety in OMA, membership from Public Safety related entities has increased and joint application standards development with other Public Safety organizations are being established.
The OMA Board Chairman has reached out to Kevin McGinnis to address any misunderstandings about the work being done at OMA and its relationship to work in 3GPP. We have not yet received his reply, but we look forward to the opportunity to clarify the work program and contributions being made by OMA’s members.