A new era of mobile intelligence

Emergency response agencies today face increased challenges as they strive to create safer environments for their communities.

In a time where resources are limited and departments are being asked to do more with less, criminal elements are getting more technology savvy, taking advantage of the latest innovations to try to gain an edge.

New types of crimes are popping up, and agencies are becoming increasingly engaged in responses that require complex regional or multijurisdictional coordination.

Typically, public safety agencies have relied on LMR networks, and these have performed very well as they are specifically designed for disaster management.

Over the next decade, P25 will remain as one of the best tools for mission-critical voice communications, and agencies are continuing to leverage investments in the technology by adding data and application capability.

But while P25 data applications will continue to serve the industry well, the value of having access to broadband is clear as responders start to rely on multimedia, database access and video to do their jobs.

LTE is gaining traction worldwide as the public safety mobile broadband standard, but while it is starting to roll out, it is not yet ready to meet all mission-critical user requirements.

Motorola Solutions’ view is that LMR and broadband will complement each other for years to come. Because they are optimised for different purposes, they are not mutually exclusive, but are rather complementary technologies.

When converging LMR and LTE in public safety communications there are many deployment models available today - agencies can have any combination of mission-critical radios on public safety networks, specialised broadband devices on dedicated broadband networks and/or consumer-grade devices on carrier networks - and it is clear that various models will be used.

But the bigger question is, how do we create optimised end-user experiences across a multitude of different devices, networks and systems so that users are able to access and share information regardless of network or device?

A converged LMR and broadband network will unlock access to information and enable better collaboration, but decisions will ultimately be driven by desired user experiences and applications.

The amount of information available today is staggering and the right tools and systems are required to integrate, filter, sort and correlate this data to derive value.

To keep up with the pace, agencies are looking for flexibility and choice to quickly and easily adopt advances - without compromising security and coverage.

Where information has typically been used post-incident to determine who committed a crime, predictive response strategies are now being contemplated. Agencies want to not only manage and integrate their services to enable desired user experiences, but also deploy real-time command centres to help do the heavy lifting of correlating and analysing data to enable a common operating view.

Over the next few years, broadband will help deliver the high-speed data that LMR dreams about and it’s easy to see that with their individual strengths, LMR and broadband will complement each other and agencies will benefit from both.

With more information flowing between citizens, responders and agencies, it is ultimately intelligence that will help build a safer community.

*Bruce Brda is Motorola Solutions’ Senior Vice President for Government Solutions. He is responsible for the creation, sale and delivery of solutions and services and leads the company’s learning and customer advocacy teams.