LTE standards group targeting mission-critical push-to-talk standard for early 2016

Last year, an Alcatel-Lucent official said LTE equipment capable of supporting public safety’s need for mission-critical voice could be commercially available by 2018. If the SA6 working group is able to meet its schedule and develop an LTE mission-critical-voice standard early next year, this projection is very realistic, according to industry experts.

But the availability of standardized mission-critical-voice LTE gear is only one part of the equation that state and local officials must consider when contemplating the notion of further investments in LMR systems.

In the United States, no government entity is certain when mission-critical voice over LTE will be an option, because the timetable for FirstNet’s deployment has not been determined. FirstNet officials plan to release a draft request for proposal (RFP) by the end of March, and they have expressed hope that a final RFP can be prepared by the end of the year.

However, when FirstNet will deploy its LTE network in a given geographic area is unknown, because no decisions have been made about the procurement process and business model for the system.

A second question of timing is when—if ever—public-safety personnel will be comfortable enough with mission-critical voice over LTE that they would be willing to part with their trusted LMR systems. FirstNet officials have said that they plan to design the nationwide public-safety LTE network to support mission-critical voice eventually, but they have stressed that public-safety representatives will determine when to adopt the voice capability.