Public safety continues to
invest in P25 for voice
In North America, the trend is for larger, interoperable, regional P25 systems
complemented by broadband data services, as James Atkinson reports
P25 (Project 25) two-way
radio technology remains
a popular technology
choice for mission-critical
communications users.
The vast majority of systems are found
in the US and Canada, but there
are some in Australia, New Zealand,
South America and the UK.
According to research published by
the US-based Project 25 Technology
Interest Group (PTIG) in May, there
are a total of 2,351 P25 systems
worldwide including 1,017 trunking
and 1,334 conventional systems
(see box, overleaf ).
It seems that despite the advent of
Push-to-talk over Cellular alternatives,
few, if any, mission-critical users wish
to rely wholly on LTE broadband
technology yet.
“Mission-critical push-to-talk
(MCPTT) is top of the mind with
a lot of industry folk, but customers
just focus on the mission at hand. P25
systems are important to them as they
are the lifeline for fire, police and other
the near term, we see P25 as a very
stable market. We certainly see a
healthy demand for both devices and
infrastructure, and that is why we are
still enhancing our P25 portfolio.”
James Teel, director, product line
management – applications and
services at Harris Public Safety &
Professional Communications, argues
that MCPTT is a hook that will lead
to MCData and MCVideo. “When
that happens we will see voice services
augmented with video and data such
as AVL and in-building location
enhancements. All our P25 radios
have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and we are
working with a third party to make
that indoor location capability even
better, and we are also investing in
video analytics capabilities.”
Harris made an early decision
to invest in multi-mode converged
devices at a time when many doubted
there would be a market sustainable
enough to justify investment in dual
LMR-LTE terminals.
“We have had the XL-200P P25-
first-responders. New things don’t
move the needle much with them,”
observes Chris Lonnett, vice-president
of North America government, central
region sales at Motorola Solutions.
Anatoly Delm, director of product
marketing at Motorola Solutions,
points out that while FirstNet on
AT&T and other US carriers offer
PTT voice solutions, they all position
themselves as providing the data
complement to mission-critical LMR
voice services.
“The US approach is that missioncritical
broadband services are very
complementary to LMR products,
and that has been our focus in product
development on both the device and
on the infrastructure and system
side,” says Jeremy Elder, systems
infrastructure and consoles product
line manager at Harris Public Safety &
Professional Communications.
“We are working on interworking
solutions between LMR and LTE as
we see both technologies continuing
in parallel for some time yet. In
16 www.criticalcomms.com July 2019
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