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Commercial technologies improve public safety
Fires, disaster relief, police work, national security… to handle vital situations like these, authorities always need reliable and controlled information. This information is processed by systems that are usually tailor-made and very costly. Now we see a new market emerging that uses commercial solutions.
July 23, 2008
Tapping commercial technologies and open standards would give public safety professionals continuous access to the latest services and applications at the same pace as ordinary consumers.
Open standards create a broad marketplace for many commercial suppliers of networks, services and applications. This has resulted in communication networks that connect around the world: interoperability on a global scale.
The technology exists, no doubt, but is it really feasible for professional communities to use commercial services for their operations?
Ritva Svenningsson is director in National Security & Public Safety at Ericsson.
“Yes, this is possible,” she says. “If control of the essential parts of the core network and protection of its users are required, authorities can act as virtual network operators, or buy the communication capabilities with specific features as managed services from a public operator.”
What about availability, when the traffic is intense or the network is not functioning?
The first big enabler of public safety communication over standardized 3G (3GPP) networks was the introduction of priority access.
This can be compared to the way emergency services use roads. In an emergency, authorities can turn on their vehicles’ flashing lights to ensure priority on the roadways. A similar type of function can now be applied in the 3GPP communication networks.
The second feature is a roaming capability that allows overlapping access to different networks. If one is down, another network is searched for.
What about during disaster situations, when infrastructure is disabled? In this case, commercial technologies offer compact transportable solutions with connections via satellite to work when no other existing network is available locally.
“We have seen the beginning of how the national security and public safety community will use the capabilities of commercial technologies and mobile broadband,” Svenningsson says. “Soon we will see a whole new market opening up for commercial network operators.”
