TCCA Outlines Strategic Direction 2016 - 2020
The TCCA (TETRA and Critical Communications Association) will to continue to support and promote the use of TETRA while it is driving industry synergy in the development of future mobile broadband capability for the users and providers of critical comms.
Back in December 1994 the TCCA (TETRA and Critical Communications Association), created a forum to act on behalf of all parties interested in TETRA technology, representing users, manufacturers, application providers, integrators, operators, test houses and telecom agencies.
Today, the organization has become the leading association on Critical Communications Technology representing more than 160 organizations from all continents of the world, bringing together all those with an interest in the provision of wireless communications in a mission critical or business critical environment.
As the today's critical communications technology is rapidly changing and new companies and organizations are entering the critical communications arena, offering solutions based on broadband technologies other than TETRA, the TCCA needed to fine-tune its strategic direction in order to deliver a well balanced program/approach to keep on supporting its members and to become THE Critical Communications Association.
On its website, the TCCA states that it believes in the principle of open and competitive markets worldwide through the use of common standards and harmonized spectrum. In the new strategy, this will still be one of the main focus points of the association. The TCCA will to continue to support and promote the use of TETRA technology while it is driving industry synergy in the development of future mobile broadband capability for the users and providers of critical communications.
New TCCA Mission
When we look at the new mission of the TCCA, the TCCA points out that the association is there to serve the interest of members only and that the organization continues to be open to all interested parties in Critical Communication: users, operators and industry. In its new mission, the TCCA says that it is succesfull when it serves its members and it is able to properly influence governments, standards bodies and regulators towards the needs of its members. Furthermore it will support and grow the TETRA market. The new strategy also advocates strongly for dedicated spectrum for MC Broadband networks based on open standards and in the absence of MC Broadband networks, it advocates non-mission critical Broadband as a complementary service to narrowband.
New TCCA Strategy
When we look more closely at the new strategy of the TCCA, the organization announced to its members that it will focus on the critical communications market and developing a capability to be the “go to” choice for advice on best practice and solutions for this market, based on technologies that are specified in open standards and are appropriate for this market. The TCCA will also focus on TETRA for narrow and wide band and 3GPP standardized MC LTE for broadband communications as it says that it is concerned with end to end services, solutions and interfaces for the Mission Critical industry.
In fact, with this new strategy, the TCCA will become more directly relevant to the millions of end-users whose life or operations depend on Mission Critical communications. The association is now more open to other mission critical communications technologies and most likely we will see a large number of vendors and organizations joining the TCCA in the near future.
How the new strategy of the TCCA will affect the presence of these new vendors and organizations at one of the largest events on Critical Communications in the world, Critical Communications World, is not yet known. Only time will tell. However, one thing is for sure. At the recent IWCE (International Wireless Communications Expo) that recently has taken place in Las Vegas, we already have seen a lot of new critical communications developments (often based on Broadband technologies) and number of new and innovative companies entering the critical communications arena. Examples are: Teldio, Kodiak, ESChat, Parallel Wireless, Kyocera and Sonim. It is likely that these companies will also join the TCCA.
The TCCA will support its new mission and strategy by implementing a variety of tactics and by using a variety of instruments. For more information on the TCCA, please click here.
