Interview
Thriving in
hard times
58
www.criticalcomms.com October 2020
What have been some of the key developments in
the Critical Communications Broadband Group in
recent months?
A core decision has been the setting up of three new taskforces.
The first of these will look specifically at critical broadband
applications, in particular mapping all the steps and elements
which are involved in their creation.
The second new taskforce is centred on spectrum. We are
seeing more activities on the 400MHz band, and on 450
there’s 2x5MHz available in some environments. These are
traditional, narrowband PMR bands and we need to be able to
give guidance to the marketplace about options, and what to do
with those capabilities.
The third taskforce focuses on broadband device integration
API. It investigates possibilities to enable mission-critical
application portability from device to device.
What are the plans for the group?
There are a couple of other taskforces which are likely to come
online. One of these is related to mission-critical devices, and
what should be the model when it comes to procurement.
The traditional model for, for instance, TETRA devices has
been that you ask a provider to bring you a sample. You then
test what they bring you, negotiate prices, and whoever wins
gets to deliver those products for several years.
Broadband is going to be slightly different, in that the
components and the operating system version have a much
shorter lifecycle. If you test the device across several months, by
the time it lands with the users it may be already obsolete.
This being the case, we need to find ways to do procurement
that minimise the potential impact of these short lifecycles.
In terms of the taskforce, we want contributions from
industry, but also from the user and procurement side, and
public safety operators.
What are the current technical solutions being
looked at to reduce complexity and cost in critical
broadband services?
One current area of discussion revolves around decoupling the
hardware from the MCX client, in order to be able to operate
on different lifecycles between devices and applications.
That would enable greater MCX competition, alongside
application portability. Most of all, from a public safety
operator point of view, it would also reduce the amount of
effort in continuous testing, something which would be
extremely significant.
The matrix is likely to grow hugely in the informationcentric,
application-hungry broadband environment. That
being the case, it’s important that we address these issues as
soon as possible.
Changing the subject slightly, could you give an
update on the situation with Virve 2.0 in Finland?
The most important news is that the first phase of procurement
has been finalised and the contracts issued. The core network
will be provided by Ericsson, with Radio Access Service going
to Elisa for more on Virve, see this issue’s CCT news.
In parallel to this, we are also running the MCX services
procurement process, specifically in relation to mission-critical
push-to-talk, video and data. The deadline to submit tenders is
November 9 of this year, with the intention that we’ll be able to
offer the full service by 2023.
The Virve 2.0 Device RFI has also now been issued. The
plan is to provide first analysis of the answers on 5 November
during Critical Communications Week. That will be a great
event, and a great way to get up to date with the global sector
and connect with colleagues around the world.
What are the major developments in the critical
communications sector, despite COVID-19?
Obviously, Coronavirus is impacting all meetings at the
moment, which includes things like 3GPP and the ETSI
Plugtests, something which is likely to continue for a while.
Regarding the wider certification piece, important
developments are still happening. TCCA ran a joint taskforce
earlier this year with the Global Certification Forum (GCF)
to scope the needs for mission-critical conformance and
interoperability testing and certification.
The work is now continuing in a permanent group – the
Mission Critical Agreement Group MCAG – jointly run by
TCCA and GCF under GCF governance. That’s currently in
the process of gathering use-cases and writers for corresponding
test cases, bringing in new participants from the telecom sector
to work on mission-critical communications.
Philip Mason talks to TCCA vice-chair Tero
Pesonen about recent Critical Communications
Broadband Group developments
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