Crystal ball for mission-critical voice over LTE timeline certainly not crystal clear

“When will LTE be a viable option for mission-critical voice for my first responders?”

This may well be the most vexing question regarding public-safety communications in this generation, because the answer promises to have a significant impact on multiple strategic and funding decisions that are being faced by government entities.

“I would be on an island somewhere that I owned, if I could answer questions like that, because I’m sure I could get everybody in this room to pay me a lot of money to answer it,” Andrew Thiessen, division chief for the Institute of Telecommunications Sciences (ITS), said during a session last week at the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) stakeholders conference.

And the stakes are high for decision makers, whether they are elected officials, government staffers, private consultants or industry vendors. Those who get the answer wrong may face considerable criticism for wasting scarce government resources and could find themselves looking for new jobs. Those who get the answer correct can earn the title of “visionary” and never-ending thanks for using taxpayer money in the most efficient way possible.

There are a lot of unknowns to be contemplated by those making this decision, but here are some of the key parameters that most in the industry seem to agree on:

• An LTE standard for mission-critical voice communications should be approved during the first quarter of 2016—less than two years away—and enabling equipment built to that standard should hit the market about two years later.
• There is plenty of incentive for industry to develop mission-critical voice over LTE. The United Kingdom wants to transition its public-safety communications from TETRA to LTE in 2016. In addition, there are many questions surrounding FirstNet’s business model while offering data-only access to first responders; however, the business case becomes much more compelling to public-safety entities if FirstNet can offer a data and voice package that allows first-responder entities stop funding their LMR systems.
• FirstNet is expected to be a data-centric system initially, but board members and staffers have said that the network will be designed to handle voice communications. At some point, that is expected to include mission-critical voice, although no one has speculated when that will occur.
• No local or state government wants to spend millions of dollars to upgrade its LMR system—an investment that likely will take 10-15 years to amortize—if its officials believe that mission-critical voice services over broadband can provide a better service than LMR within the next few years.
• Even if mission-critical voice over LTE is technically available, no one knows right now when and where FirstNet will deploy its broadband system dedicated to public safety. Such a network is needed to provide the reliable and resilient foundation for mission-critical voice.

FirstNet officials have said any transition to mission-critical voice over LTE will happen when public-safety users are comfortable with the functionality. Hopefully, this is true to a large extent, but it is somewhat naïve to believe that first-responder entities will get to make the decision in a vacuum. There will be considerable input from elected officials that would rather pay for communications via a single network like FirstNet, instead of paying for data and voice on separate networks.