Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Verizon Wireless to Offer Public Safety Roaming over its LTE Network

Motorola Solutions and Verizon Wireless have formed and an alliance focused on mobile broadband for public safety customers across the United States. The alliance allows public safety agencies to supplement their mission critical core platforms with the rich media services and the increased capacity and coverage of Verizon Wireless' 4G LTE network. This will allow first responders who travel off of the Public Safety LTE network, to have interoperability and secure roaming onto the Verizon Wireless public LTE network.



The companies said they will offer public safety agencies access to real-time management and control, enhanced nationwide roaming, and site sharing of existing mobile broadband sites for rapid deployment and economies of scale.



Motorola Public Safety LTE devices will be tested, pre-certified and pre-registered by Motorola Solutions
and Verizon Wireless to provide reliable interoperability between an agency-owned Public Safety LTE system and
the nationwide Verizon Wireless network.



"We are committed to investing in the development of critical innovations -- based on a fully standards-compliant LTE architecture -- to offer economies of scale and meet the unique public safety functionality requirements. Motorola Solutions' Public Safety LTE solution includes innovative multiband LTE devices and real-time device management and control. When combined with the extensive network coverage and site sharing offered through Verizon Wireless, we'll deliver an incomparable solution which will bring tremendous benefits to the public safety community including interoperability and secure public/private roaming," stated Bob Schassler, senior vice president, Radio Solutions, Motorola Solutions.



"Verizon Wireless' advanced wireless networks will complement Motorola's private network solution to help public safety agencies run their operations more efficiently and effectively. The advanced capabilities of 4G LTE, which Verizon Wireless is aggressively deploying across the United States, will allow agencies to leverage more applications and rich media services that were previously unavailable or too cost-prohibitive to implement in a wireless environment. 4G LTE brings a true mobile broadband experience to these public safety agencies -- and allows them to do the same type of work inside a police cruiser as they currently do in an office," said Mike Lanman, president, enterprise and government markets, Verizon Wirelesshttp://www.verizonwireless.com http://www.motorola.com

  • In his recently announced National Broadband Initiative, President Obama called for an investment of $10.7 billion for public safety networking. This would consist of $3.2 billion to reallocate the "D Block" (which is a band of spectrum that would be reserved and prioritized for public safety and not auctioned as called for under existing law); $7 billion to support the deployment of this network; and $500 million from the WIN Fund for R&D and technological development to tailor the network to meet public safety requirements.


  • In January 2011, the FCC adopted new rules that requires all 700 MHz public safety mobile broadband networks to use a common air interface, specifically LTE, to support roaming and interoperable communications. The action builds on the technical requirements that state and local 700 MHz broadband waiver recipients are already subject to in the early buildout of their regional public safety broadband networks. The FCC is also seeking public comment on additional rules to enable nationwide interoperability.


  • In November 2010, Motorola demonstrated live over-the-air (OTA) broadband video in the 700MHz Public Safety spectrum band. The exercise, which was conducted at the 2010 Motorola Digital Users Group Conference, showcased a compact USB device based on commercial silicon supporting the Band Class 14 Public Safety spectrum band. The demonstration also highlighted dynamic prioritization and preemption for safeguarding LTE capacity for critical resources during an emergency response.



    Motorola's portfolio of LTE devices will include portable data adaptors, vehicular modems and multimedia handhelds among others. Motorola has also developed real-time video intelligence that adjusts video to best match real-time wireless LTE bandwidth capabilities with the device screen size.