LTE for Public Safety

The nation's public-safety groups have agreed to move forward and use LTE in the 700MHz band to deliver mobile broadband applications used by police, fire and emergency medical services. By doing so, they'll be able to take advantage of wireless broadband-which is essential for support of mission-critical services that accelerate response times, improve situational awareness-to increase the safety of the public and all personnel. Watch for early-moving agencies to begin work to deploy their new systems in 2011. 

With its high-capacity and low-latency performance characteristics, LTE will allow public safety responders to send live streaming video, photos and other data from an incident scene back to command posts and agency personnel will be able to share data or photos of crime suspects with personnel in the field. These types of capabilities will present a substantial improvement over the current land mobile radio (LMR) networks, designed primarily for voice communications, which can't meet today's need for high-speed mobile data services.

The deployments have been made possible in part by waivers granted by the FCC in May 2010. The waivers allow 21 city, county and state organizations to pursue work to build regional or statewide interoperable public safety solutions in 700 MHz spectrum even though the complete plan for public safety communications in the 700 MHz band is not yet finished.

An additional impetus is economic stimulus funding, which is helping eligible agencies around the U.S. move aggressively on planned public safety broadband systems. Two agencies have issued recent RFPs and are currently evaluating competitive bids. These include the Los Angeles Regional Interoperability Communication System (LA RICS), which will build an integrated wireless voice and data communications system that will cover 4,000 miles of terrain serving 88 municipalities and support more than 34,000 local first responders and other mission-critical personnel. The other agency is the City of Charlotte, North Carolina, which will build a LTE PSBS that will serve the city and surrounding county lands. The San Francisco Bay Area is also expected to become an early mover for LTE public safety and is another region to watch. 

"The first two projects out of the gate will generate lessons learned and provide use-cases that will help people in the future acquire and put out RFPs," said Morgan Wright, vice president, global public safety segment for Alcatel-Lucent.

Public safety's communication requirements for LTE will differ from those of commercial networks because first-responders require specific applications and performance features and because LTE also introduces numerous deployment options.

For example, some large agencies will build their own systems but others will find it more economical to partner with other jurisdictions or private-sector providers to share infrastructure and services to lower costs. In fact, experts believe this partnership approach will become common, not only because of the reduced costs but also because it contributes to the long-term goal of nationwide interoperability of public safety communications systems. Those involved in partnerships will be able to keep administrative control over their subscribers and keep their data secure and separate from the others.

Alcatel-Lucent is helping to lead the way to achieving a nationwide public safety LTE broadband network in the U.S. The company is the first technology partner to go live within the LTE emergency communications demonstration network in Boulder, CO, which is being managed by the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) program, established by the U.S Department of Commerce.

Alcatel-Lucent has also successfully completed the first data call on a LTE network operating at Band 14, the spectrum earmarked for public safety agencies in the U.S. The call demonstrated the readiness of the network to support current public safety applications used by police, fire and emergency medical services as well as new applications enabled by wireless broadband. 

"This achievement represents an important step toward revolutionizing public safety networks as it establishes the readiness of LTE as a technology to enable broadband data applications," Wright said.