Cybersecurity could be the biggest challenge for FirstNet, next-gen 911

It has been a very interesting past five months. During that time, I’ve been able to travel throughout the country, attending events showcasing the latest and greatest technologies that promise to deliver unprecedented capabilities that can bring the nation’s public-safety and critical-infrastructure communications systems into the 21^st Century.

It has been a very educational ride, taking me to stops at the following events:

• IWCE, where critical-infrastructure communications are featured;
• Utilities Telecom Council (UTC), where utilities and vendors detail progress toward smart-grid architectures;
• Unmanned Systems, where intriguing drone technologies take center stage;
• Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) Broadband Stakeholder Conference, where PSCR’s staff annually unveils the findings of its latest research about first-responder LTE and LMR;
• Big Telecom Event, where advancements in commercial-carrier networks are showcased;
• National Emergency Number Association (NENA), where progress toward next-generation 911 is a focus; and
• Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO), where attendees last week learned about the key technologies and issues facing public safety in key area like FirstNet and next-generation 911.

While the focus of each event is geared to a different audience, the fundamental building blocks at each show actually share a great deal of commonality.

Internet Protocol (IP) is pervasive throughout modern-day solutions, and ever-increasing computing power is available in smaller packages and at lower costs, so access points and sensors can be placed almost anywhere. Add in greater backhaul options, and broadband connectivity has become a realistic alternative in locations that once were deemed impractical to cover. Everything is better, faster and cheaper.

And the capabilities that new systems yield are nothing short of remarkable. Utilities can identify and address issues in their networks before they become problems that result in the light going out. Drones can be used to act as the ears and eyes of enterprises in hazardous locations, providing an efficient way to search for bodies in a disaster area or determine whether a piece of critical equipment—a piece of rail in a remote area or a radio antenna on a tall tower—has been damaged.

With next-generation 911 and FirstNet, public-safety personnel can leverage the power of interconnected data, location information and analytics to protect both emergency callers and the first responders trying to help them. And solutions continue to be developed that seem to answer key functionality issues for public safety.

For instance, there was a time when it seemed questionable whether LTE could be used in a mission-critical environment by first responders, because the 4G cellular technology originally was designed to work only when connectivity to an LTE evolved packet core (EPC)—big equipment with a massive price tag—was available.

Lose connectivity to the EPC, and that whiz-bang LTE device in your hand was of little use. Unlike LMR technologies, LTE did not provide graceful degradation to direct—or peer-to-peer—communications when all access to network infrastructure was unavailable. And, of course, commercial voice over LTE was only just being proposed, much less mission-critical push-to-talk capability.

All of these things are changing quickly. Voice over LTE is offered as a commercial service, and the audio-quality tests for HD Voice offerings are remarkably good. The standards body for LTE—3GPP—has established an entire working group solely to develop a standard for mission-critical push-to-talk (MCPTT) functionality that works even when the device cannot connect to a network. That MCPTT should be finalized by this time next year.