Urgent Communications Tech Talk

In This Issue

ADVERTISEMENT Free On-Demand Webinar: Enabling First Responders with Mobile Devices The evolution of mobile broadband networks has spawned an enormous amount of innovation in terms of the devices and applications that leverage those networks. Meanwhile, a plethora of applications have emerged—video, photo/document transmission, location, personnel tracking/monitoring, medical telemetry, emergency alerts and gunshot location, to name a few—that are making first responders more effective in the field, and safer. This event will examine what's currently available to the public-safety sector and provide insight as to how the future evolution of such devices and applications will unfold. View Free On-Demand Webinar Now!

Talking Points

LTE may be data-only, but still needs to support voice

There is an interesting situation that is brewing when it comes to Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, and I'm surprised to find people already talking about it as operators aren’t scheduled to deploy the technology until next year. And that is: How will LTE support SMS and voice, which are the bread and butter of the mobile operator business today? Right now, LTE cannot support either because it is an all-IP technology that doesn't support the circuit-switched architectures found in today's mobile networks.

It's easy to say that voice and SMS aren't all that necessary in an LTE world since the technology is a data-only play. But Steve Shaw, vice president of corporate marketing with Kineto Wireless, which offers software for wireless broadband services, says SMS functionality is important for LTE because the early LTE dongle service that mobile operators, and potentially some public-safety agencies, will have at their disposal will not work without SMS functionality. Mobile networks, including LTE networks, are constructed to rely on SMS for device-configuration messages.

In a similar vein, T-Mobile in Germany — which so far doesn't have any spectrum to deploy the technology — nevertheless has said voice and SMS need to be supported in the LTE world. But that only makes sense if an operator is deploying LTE to gain the greatest spectral efficiency possible, but then falling back on less spectrally efficient 3G networks to handle voice. There's also a chicken-and-egg problem: Manufacturers won't make LTE phones if voice services aren't enabled on the network. Sexy devices are what sell such services going forward, not boring dongles. Read More

A note to our readers: We will not publish Urgent Communications Today on Thursday because of the holiday. We will resume our regular publishing schedule next week. In the meantime, have a happy and safe Fourth of July.

In the News

Augusta Systems says public safety largely untapped in M2M

When folks talk about the machine-to-machine communications revolution, the context mostly revolves around connected machines such as cars, appliances and buildings. Public safety itself, aside from the boom in vehicle telematics, appears to be largely untapped. Read More

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