PSCR attendees debate LMR plans in the face of progress toward mission-critical voice over LTE

When standards for public-safety functions are released, Thiessen is confident that complying products will work from the outset, because 3GPP is so diligent to ensure that it does not release a “bad standard.”

“So, if we actually find a problem in a standard, industry is going to fix it, because nobody in 3GPP wants that organization to have a black eye in its specifications,” Thiessen said. “Change requests [to address any problems] get high priority and get done very quickly, when it comes to something that’s major—and public safety is major at this point.

“Release 1 of anything in this particular process, from a technology perspective, I don’t know that I’m concerned. But public safety has to be comfortable with this technology for it to be a replacement for land mobile radio. That’s for public safety to decide—not me, not standards; public safety has to figure that out.”

Indeed, several other factors will have to be considered before a public-safety entity contemplates transitioning its mission-critical-voice communications from an LMR system to an LTE system, including the life cycle of the LMR system, coverage and reliability of the available LTE system and the availability of mass-produced devices that meet users’ needs, according to panelists and attendees of the session.

Depending on the circumstances in a given geographic location, it could be several years before all the pieces are in place to make a transition to mission-critical voice over LTE, according to Barry Luke, public-safety subject-matter expert for the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC).

“We do have a challenge to make sure that our elected officials and our executives don’t hear the wrong message, and I think there’s a lot of energy about that,” Luke said. “I know that NPSTC and SAFECOM have recently put out information about that.”