as discussed above. There was a further emphasis this year
though, with a great deal of new discussion around how the
technology is actually likely to be used, over and above rolling
out MCPTT.
This was exemplified by co-founder of the Public Safety
Network Jason Karp, who started his presentation on the
‘smart connected ambulance’ by describing its apparent
benefits in relation to a hypothetical multi-vehicle accident
scenario. These included the ability to live stream body-worn
video footage from the scene, instant access to medical details
via the scanning of the patient’s driver’s licence, Bluetoothconnected
stethoscopes allowing multiple parties to listen to
their heartbeat, and so on.
“Every piece of technology that I just mentioned exists
today,” he told the audience, “something which is superexciting
for this industry. I predict 100 per cent LTE adoption
by public safety within 18 to 24 months.”
This prediction, he said, echoing Parkinson, doesn’t take
into account the number of first-responders who already carry
their own smartphone, which if they were counted would
mean that all those on the front line have access to LTE
technology already. “Whether authorised or agency issue, it’s
almost irrelevant. It’s part of the fabric and that’s where the
environment is going.”
Continuing his presentation, Karp emphasised the need
for open standards, to create interoperability and global
economies of scale. Speaking of this, he said: “We’re starting
to see it across the board now, certainly in LTE with 3GPP,
but also via the use of open APIs application programming
interfaces and the use of SDKs software development kits.
We need to make things work together, with operability built
Left: Programme
director Bryan
Clark gave an
ESN update;
right: Jason Karp
– ‘Innovation is
required on a
global scale’
We’re starting to see it across the
board now, certainly in LTE with
3GPP, but also via the use of open APIs and
the use of SDKs. We need to make
things work together
in from the beginning. An example of that is in relation to
functionality around mapping, which we all use in some
area of our lives. We all have to agree on what are the
right standards that we want to use, so the industry has
something to refer to when offering its products and services
to us. I need to be able to integrate my mapping system
with my CAD, with my smartwatch, and so on, to give a
seamless experience.
“Ultimately, you want innovation on a global scale, not
just on a piecemeal basis. This in turn drives down costs
and drives up innovation. Gone are the days of the isolated
proprietary systems, where you have to build on multiple
different platforms.”
These themes were further taken up by Karp’s co-founder
of the Public Safety Network (and former president of
FirstNet), TJ Kennedy, in his presentation on ‘the Internet of
Life Saving Things’, which took place on day two.
Speaking after the session – which also focused in part
on the willingness (or lack thereof) of public safety to roll
out new forms of connectivity, storage and so on – he said:
“I believe that we public safety need to change the model
where we’re using older technology than most consumers and
most enterprises.
“In the future – and I can’t predict what day that will be –
when 6G and 7G arrive, public safety across the world should
have access to those technologies, as they come out, at the
same time as everyone else. With FirstNet, it will have 5G
added to 4G LTE as soon as consumers have access to it.”
Finland and Germany’s plans for the
transition to mission-critical broadband
We shift our scene to the Critical Communications Europe
stream, which broke down into three broad topics: the
work that European public safety operators are doing to
ensure a successful transition to mission-critical broadband;
the context in terms of cellular technology (both 5G and
the availability of spectrum); and recent developments in
supporting technologies such as AI and cloud – due to space
considerations, we’ll focus on the first two (see our recent
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