5×5 Summit, a successor to the PSCR Stakeholders Conference, took place during the last week of June in Chicago, jointly organized by PSCR and FirstNet.
PSCR conferences were always focused on innovation – PSCR funded many research projects, and PSCR conferences were the place where researchers came to report on their results and demonstrate their achievements – I remember very well presentations and demos of drones, VR UIs, haptics, and many other future-focused solutions.
While 5×5 Summit is still covering research and grants for development of innovative communication solutions for public safety are still made available, the focus has shifted toward the practical side – what can network do for the public safety users today, and what users need from the network – today.
Interoperability was the operating word at the event. As we know, the concept of interoperability is multi-faceted. At a basic engineering level, interoperability simply means that all elements of the communication network can communicate with each other, i.e. they are interoperable. But in a lot of cases, basic interoperability is not enough – regulations and policies are often needed to achieve full interoperability between systems and networks.
There are only two ways to achieve interoperability – open standards and gateways. If all communication elements adhere to the same open standard such as 3GPP MCX, for example, it means that all of those elements will communicate with each other directly. If, however, some of the elements are not standards-based, the only way to achieve interoperability is by using a gateway.
On a grand scheme of things, there is nothing wrong with the gateways. Gateways provide connectivity between different types of communication technologies, such as PSTN and VoIP or LMR and MCX. Gateways have been around forever and will be around forever. When it comes to public safety operations gateways are prolific and successful (think of RoIP gateways, for example).
But…
When an emergency comes, gateways don’t work. If multiple agencies are responding, they have to be able to communicate. Emergencies don’t announce themselves in advance giving you time to prepare. You simply don’t have time to build gateways if agencies that need to cooperate on response use different technologies. The only way to be prepared for an emergency is by ensuring that one, open, secure, reliable, interoperable technology is used by all. And this is why we have MCX.
An adoption of the open standard such as MCX can solve all interoperability issues of public safety communications. Now, the key word in the previous sentence is “adoption”. While MCX can solve interoperability issues, it first needs to be adopted by the first responders – and that requires a significant effort. I attended a number of “fire chat” sessions on the subject of mission-critical voice, hosted by PSCR researchers. In the sessions, the users and public safety IT folks expressed their concern and frustration with the state of the MCX/MCPTT technology, pouring over lots of user requirements that had not been addressed. I was sitting in one of such sessions listening to the “unaddressed” user requirements for the MCPTT devices, such as the ability to control volume and channels (groups would be a proper MCPTT term), minimal UI, no need for the screen, sturdiness of the device and so on. At some point, I couldn’t hold it anymore and I simply raised my hand holding the L3Harris XL hybrid (dual-mode) radio, which was perfectly answering literally all stated requirements. It appears that many of the people in the audience – the people who deploy communication technology for the first responders – didn’t even know that L3Harris devices are equipped with LTE capabilities and fully standard MCPTT client, and already deployed in the MCX networks. My take on this? There is hard (but critically necessary!) work required on the widespread adoption of MCX technology. And that in turn means that public safety professionals need to be educated on the benefits, value, capabilities, and availability of MCX/MCPTT solutions – today, and in the future. Adoption and education should be critical work items for the FirstNet.
Interoperability is critical not only in communications but across the full spectrum of public safety activities. For example, one of the big issues in public safety operations is the ability to share incident data between multiple agencies, each of which might be using a myriad of incompatible tools. As part of the 5×5 program, there was an excellent keynote by Dr. Lori Moore-Merrill, U.S. Fire Administrator. Particularly, she mentioned the development of the National Emergency Response Information System (NERIS) which would allow all agencies to access the system where all the incident information will be available on a near real-time basis – while it might not solve the interoperability challenge of the real-time response operation, it still be an invaluable tool for all the first responders.
Lastly, I would like to mention the technology demonstrations that took place during 5×5. More than 70 demos, showing both the technology available today and the results of the research project, the technology of tomorrow, so to speak. The demos ran through all three days of the event and were very well attended. I was happy to demonstrate our partner products – L3Harris dual-mode radios and Catalyst Propulsion Dispatch console, communications over live MCX network including smartphone MCPTT apps.
Thank you FirstNet and NIST PSCR for an excellent event. Open standards-based broadband communications is the only way forward for public safety communications, and here at Softil we are very excited about enabling the MCX rEvolution.
