Next-gen 911, FirstNet LTE visions appear to be a promising match

If a geographic area has the next-gen 911 capability of receiving and processing information from the public and multiple databases, that’s great; however, if this information has to be relayed to the field via voice—often a time-consuming, channel-eating process—it may not get to the first responder as quickly as it should.

And having public-safety LTE at a given location is pretty cool, but if the supporting 911 center is not set up to receive, process and filter through multimedia and data on the first responder’s behalf, it’s possible that potentially helpful information to the first responder could be missed.

Now, this doesn’t mean that next-gen 911 and public-safety LTE deployments need to be perfectly synchronized, because that’s not realistic. It does mean that those working on next-gen 911 and public-safety LTE should take advantage of opportunities to coordinate planning and leverage each other’s assets, because neither initiative has an overabundance of resources.

It also means that players involved in both initiatives should be clear in their messages to power brokers—elected officials, regulators and others—that next-gen 911 and public-safety LTE are interdependent and that both are deserving of prioritized support. After all, only when both initiatives are in place can the envisioned operational functionalities, efficiencies and flexibilities be realized to their full potential.