Looking into the crystal ball
Several Motorola Solutions executives have stated publicly that mission-critical voice over broadband will not be available to public safety for at least 8 to 10 years. But DeRango declined to speculate on a timetable, noting that there are so many unknown factors in the equation that it is difficult to make an educated guess.
“What I see is that, within the next few years, people will start to do voice on their LTE networks, particularly these [700 MHz] waiver customers. It won’t be mission critical — it will be commercial quality and used as a backup,” DeRango said. “Then, as these technical problems get resolved and [as voice gets] introduced into their devices and into the network, you’ll see them rely on it more and more.”
Like DeRango, Harris’s Vaughan said that he believes LMR “is going to be around for awhile,” but projects that pilot programs for mission-critical voice over broadband will occur during the next two years — presuming that public-safety-grade LTE networks have been installed by that point — and that a mission-critical voice solution will be operational for some public-safety entities within three to seven years.
Absent significant federal funding to pay for LTE deployments in remote areas, DeRango said that he believes high-powered LMR communications will continue to be used for a significant period of time in rural areas, because the cost of deploying broadband in such sparsely populated regions may not be feasible. Similarly, Vaughan said that he believes firefighters will be very reluctant to stop using LMR radios on the fireground in the foreseeable future.
“They don’t need or want to use broadband communications when you’re inside a building fighting a fire,” he said. “You need your voice communications, because your hands are busy, your feet are busy and your eyes are busy, so you don’t have time to be looking at a screen and punching buttons when you’re fighting a fire. That kind of communications is probably not destined for broadband to begin with.”
Other than these possible exceptions, the potential benefits of public safety utilizing devices with smartphone-like functionality — and hopefully, pricing that is more similar to consumer products — will be compelling enough that law-enforcement officials eventually will want to make the transition to voice over broadband, Wright said.
“The ability to have mission-critical voice can happen within five years, from a feature standpoint,” he said. “The question is whether the right mindset will be there in five years to accept a new form of voice. Will the right investments be made to create the devices, however they look?”
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