Is critical communications vital for the future?

Collaboration on technical standards and lobbying for harmonised spectrum are two of the major challenges facing the critical communications industry over the next decade or so, writes Peter Clemons*, who in this article looks at the road ahead and considers some sombre forecasts.

TETRA, P25, TETRAPOL and agencies in the public safety and emergency services especially need to create a strong, critical communications ecosystem capable of influencing the evolution of standards-based (ie, 3GPP LTE Advanced) next-generation mobile broadband services.

The US is currently leading the way, having assigned spectrum and money to a nationwide 700 MHz public safety broadband network based on LTE. The TETRA + Critical Communications Association (TCCA) has set up a Critical Communications Broadband Group (CCBG) to partner with other agencies around the world such as NPSTC/NIST, PSC-Europe, APCO International and the TETRAPOL Forum and a number of equipment manufacturers are partnering to develop, market and sell solutions.

In spite of these important steps, the experience of previous failed attempts to create a common, interoperable global standard for the industry suggest that caution is required and that the road ahead will be long, painful and treacherous. Several companies are likely to falter along the way and commercial interests, the excessive, rigid enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPRs) and conflicting requirements and objectives will probably slow down the process and make the final cost higher than anticipated.

Strong leadership, clearly articulated goals, fair access to technology by a broad and vigorous ecosystem and sensible compromises by all parties will be needed to allow the creation of a basis for the new information societies and economies which will emerge over the coming 20 years.

Over the past 20 years or so, commercial mobile operators successfully developed a highly profitable business based on best-effort, mass-market voice and SMS. More recently, the deployment of UMTS/HSPA networks and the massive adoption of smartphones has driven growth in internet access and data applications.

However, it is now becoming clear that this commercial 2G/3G mobile communications model will no longer work in the emerging 4G/5G world where applications become critical and real time: an indispensable extension of the user’s life itself.

Historically, it has been annoying not to get a signal when calling up a friend on a mobile phone; as soon as these same mobile operators take on QoS contracts for critical national infrastructure, intelligent transport systems or the National Health Service, we are looking at very different business models and potentially life-threatening scenarios.

Commercial operators are looking for the new revenue streams available from providing high-speed data services to professional users, as subscriber growth stalls in the developed world amid continued downward pressure on prices for voice and SMS. These global ventures still have a lot to learn before we can entrust them with the task of running a mission-critical network: more lobbying, marketing and technicians will not solve the problem.

Welcome to the future of communications, which will be critical communications!

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Source: Radiocomms.com.au