Public safety LTE market to increase by 43%

The global public safety LTE market has been forecast to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 43% over the next five years, increasing from a value of $1.8 billion in 2013, to account for over $10 billion in revenue by 2018, according to Companiesandmarkets.com.

Considered as the de facto standard for public safety broadband communications, LTE is rapidly gaining momentum within the public safety industry. As a result, public safety agencies, vendors and service providers are heavily investing in public safety LTE, with commercial deployments in both the North America and the Middle East regions.

While initial investments appear promising, there still remain a number of key issues that need to be addressed such as frequency spectrum allocation, funding for private LTE network deployments, QoS prioritisation of users in commercial networks and interoperability with legacy land mobile radio (LMR) systems such as APCO 25 and TETRA.

Operator service revenues will constitute a vast majority of the revenue, followed by managed services and integration, representing a lucrative opportunity for vendors and system integrators to build, own and operate public safety LTE networks.

Europe will lag behind the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Latin America in the early adoption of public safety LTE technology due to stringent spectrum regulation policies. The Middle East has already witnessed commercialisation of the technology with an early deployment by the Qatar MOI.