Potomac Spectrum Partners plans to begin building nationwide TETRA system by the end of the year

TETRA is the LMR standard for public-safety agencies in Europe and many other parts of the world, but U.S. public-safety agencies largely have adopted the P25 standard. But Scapier said PSP officials are excited about the ability to leverage TETRA, which also is expected to provide a smooth migration path to LTE, which he believes will be the standard for all communications eventually.

“There are a number of reasons why we like TETRA,” Scapier said. “One, TETRA has proven to be the most resilient and successful system for public-safety and critical communications outside the United States—that is not an arguable point. Two, the technology that has done the most research into the migration, co-existence and movement toward LTE has been TETRA.

“It’s logical for us, and we love this technology. It’s new and potentially disruptive—in a positive sense—in the United States, but it’s been proven elsewhere to be a remarkable technology for the purposes that it was designed.”

Meanwhile, the interoperable push-to-talk capabilities provided by TASSTA means that users of all technologies—not just TETRA—will have an opportunity to leverage the PSP network, Scapier said.

“It is an app that is downloaded into your radio [or smartphone device],” he said. “And though that application, I can talk to TETRA, I can talk to P25, I can talk to DMR, with the permission of the system operator.”

Such flexibility promises to be important during emergency situations for public-safety users and other critical-infrastructure personne, which are expected to be the primary target market for PSP intiallly, Scapier said.

“The research that we’ve done and others have done is that the majority of radios in play during crisis situations will not be P25, will not be TETRA, will not be DMR,” Scapier said. “They will be smartphones—maybe 60% or 70% in each situation, with 30% or 40% being the technologies that operate within that space currently.”

PSP is led by a team with considerable wireless-communications experience, including key investor Jim Judson, who was a co-founder of the Eagle River Investments—with Craig McCaw—which took over ownership of Nextel Communications to make that entity a major nationwide player prior to its sale to Sprint.