TCCA CCBG Advances Critical Broadband

The 16th TCCA Critical Communications Broadband Group (CCBG) Plenary proved a resounding success. Taking place over three days in Espoo, Finland hosted by TCCA member Nokia, more than 55 organisations came together to drive the development of critical broadband. Key outcomes from the meeting are:

• Critical Communications community and MNOs benefit strongly from closer engagement
• Technology, the network environment, laws and regulations governing use of critical broadband and end user field operations all need to develop in parallel
• Many possibilities to harvest broadband benefits are already available today as demonstrated by the Finnish community

Participants included critical communications users, public safety and commercial operators, regulators, broadband equipment vendors, critical applications providers, consultants, and representatives of standardisation organisations.

The first day saw authorities and solution provider companies from the host country Finland demonstrate their success-in-co-operation, based on trust between agencies and critical communications services and applications. The shared VIRVE network as a continuous critical service has enabled the authorities to also utilise available commercial broadband data services as part of their daily operations. Solutions such as multi-access routers, local control to enable network slicing in 4G networks and connection-aware applications increase the criticality level in today’s business and consumer oriented commercial networks.

Best practices in on-going developments formed the program for the second day, as well as detailed discussion on critical communications standardisation and future priorities in 3GPP. The need for interoperability and conformance testing and certification was acknowledged, likewise the need to address laws and regulations that do not currently recognise mission critical mobile broadband opportunities.

The final day focused on operator related critical communications issues. The scene was set by Jarmo Vinkvist, CEO of the Finnish shared authority network VIRVE, and complemented by a focussed presentation on the planned UK Emergency Services Network (ESN). The CCBG Mobile Network Operator task force will take the points raised and move forward to further address the requirements of the commercial operator community for serving the critical communications market.

Tero Pesonen, chair, CCBG: “This CCBG plenary showed on the one hand quite tangibly how advanced complementary broadband solutions can be taken into use today and on the other demonstrated the challenges ahead of us and how we can address them.”

Jarmo Vinkvist, CEO Suomen Virveverkko Oy, part of State Security Networks Group Finland: “It is very encouraging to see all the different stakeholders coming together to discuss and move forward matters of common interest. This is the way to achieve standardised interoperable solutions that meet our requirements.”

Tony Gray, Chief Executive, TCCA: “TCCA stands for open and standardised mobile critical communications technologies and complementary applications. We support collaborative working across the critical communications ecosystem to develop and drive the most effective solutions for all professional users. This CCBG plenary represents the core of our mission.”

Philippe Agard, chair, TCCA Broadband Industry Group (BIG) and Nokia employee: “From the broadband industry point of view it is vital to have open exchange of requirements as well as available and possible future solutions. With the inclusion of MNOs, we are on a good path to a wide critical communications broadband ecosystem”