Organized by the Critical Communications Association (TCCA), CCW took place in Vienna in June 2022. The event attracted attendees from government authorities and mobile network operators, as well as network, device and application vendors.

This year, the visitors and delegations were mainly from Europe as well as some from the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific region and North America. Public safety was the most-represented sector, though utilities and railway were also present. In this blog post I'll be focusing on the topics and discussions at the event for deploying 3GPP-based broadband services for the public safety segment.

This segment refers to the state organizations in charge of the protection of the population, such as police, fire brigade and rescue services. For their operational communications, they have traditionally relied on narrowband networks such as Tetra, Tetrapol and P25, which provide voice group calls, but those systems cannot evolve to provide broadband services, meaning that major changes are coming down the line for the vast majority of public safety bodies.

The days when there was concern about whether 4G networks provide the necessary functionality and performance are now long gone. This is now recognized by government authorities and agencies, and there is a general acceptance that LTE and 5G are the way to go. Currently, almost all countries in Europe and in North America, as well as several in the Asia-Pacific region, have ongoing projects to offer broadband communications to their first responders. Early adopters are now operational, while others are in the deployment or planning phases. Technical tests and pilots have already been carried out and others are ongoing, delivering overall positive feedback. Many countries are preparing their plans to deploy mission-critical broadband and aiming towards the tendering phase. Several of these are likely to happen in 2023.

The trend also shows that many countries have ambitions to bring their mission-critical broadband network into live operations from 2025 onwards.

Starting with 4G or wait for 5G: is it really a debate?

While everyone is getting acquainted with what 5G has to offer to mission-critical communications, deciding whether the nationwide broadband network for public safety should be 4G or 5G doesn’t seem to be a hugely important topic.

FirstNet in the USA is looking at the potential of 5G, and they plan to go first to 5G NSA and then to 5G SA (NSA = non-standalone, i.e., 5G is relying on existing 4G infrastructure; SA = Standalone). But when Brian Hobson from the U.S. Government First Responder Network Authority was asked during the panel discussion “How can we move from 4G to 5G or 6G?” whether users care “about the Gs”, he replied “in short: no. They care about things that work.” The fact is that 5G will enable new use cases and offer benefits compared to 4G, but the users won’t see what is specifically 5G compared to 4G; they will see a continued evolution in the means they will have at their disposal to carry on their duties.

5G is also an evolution of 4G, and several 5G concepts such as network slicing and virtualization also apply to 4G. LTE base stations can be connected to 5G cores. Deployed 4G networks are software-upgradable to 5G. Many of the 3GPP mission-critical network enablers are already standardized for 5G, and more will come in Release 17, which is due later this year. Mission Critical group communications, also called push-to-X services or MCX, is planned to be integrated in 5G in Release 18. For the time being, the LTE part of a non-standalone 5G network can be used to support the mission-critical services. This means that there are neither drawbacks nor risks starting with 4G, especially since the use of 4G devices is already proven in the field.

The 3GPP standards will evolve, so it is important to get on that train and ensure that what is deployed is upgradable to the following releases and “Gs”. After all, it’s a journey, not a one-time deployment projec

Migration to mission critical 4G and 5G - The technical and operational aspects for adopting 3GPP based broadband services