48
CRITICAL COMMUNICATIONS
Putting the case for critical broadband
In issue 1 of LTE Today we spoke to Tony Gray, chair of the TCCA Critical Communications Broadband Group (CCBG). Since then he has been re-elected to the role for another two years. We asked him about the group’s plans for the future
Group (CCBG), held in Amsterdam following the successful Critical Communications Europe event, Tony Gray and Emmanuelle Villebrun were re-elected as chair and vice-chair respectively, for a second two-year term.
A
standards and solutions for users who operate in a mission critical or business critical environment.
T
It’s the vision of the CCBG that mission and business critical users should be able to access their information systems, applications, intranet and Internet information at broadband speeds using their professional mobile devices, wherever they are and whenever they have the need.
With LTE networks set to become increasingly available around the world, the CCBG has worked hard to develop partnerships and working relationships with many like-minded stakeholders and groups around the world to promote and drive the common agenda for the development of a single global standard.
LTE Today took the opportunity to find out what the key accomplishments of the CCBG have been so far, and the group’s plans for the future.
he CCBG was formed to drive the development and adoption of common global mobile broadband
t the March Plenary meeting of the TCCA’s Critical Communications Broadband
The CCBG and its partner stakeholder groups around the world have been successful in having these accepted by 3GPP as Work Items that will be incorporated into future releases of the 3GPP LTE standards specification. Initial work on Group Communication System Enablers is expected to be available in the coming Release 12, planned for publication at the end of this year.
Tony Gray
In that spirit of cooperation, we have made significant progress in the last two years. One of the most tangible results is the signing late last year of the formal 3GPP partnership agreement that confirms the TCCA as the latest market representation partner (MRP) in 3GPP. MRP status is given to organisations that can offer specialist market advice to 3GPP and bring a consensus view of market requirements such as services, features and functionality that fall within the 3GPP scope.
There are four key areas currently being addressed in the LTE standards to enable a suitable foundation for critical communications services. These are Group Communications System Enablers for LTE (3GPP GCSE_LTE); Proximity-based Services (3GPP ProSe) – or Direct Mode as we say in the PMR world; Public Safety Networks Resiliency (3GPP IOPS), and the Mission Critical Push-To-Talk (3GPP MCPTT) voice application standard for critical voice group communications over LTE.
Can you elaborate on the like- minded stakeholders – what types of organisations are you working with? Well, there are the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) and Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) which are driving the FirstNet nationwide public safety LTE network development in the US. They have equivalents in Canada, Australia and several other countries, and we’re all closely aligned. Then there are a great many national government authorities, many of them already operating or using TETRA or similar narrowband networks, so just to name a few the French, Belgian, Dutch, German and UK authorities. Finally but by no means least we were delighted early on in the establishment of the CCBG to be joined by the likes of the UIC (Union International de Chemins de Ferre) representing the international railways authorities, as well as the EUTC (European Utilities Technology Council) representing the critical utility services.
A great example of the sort of informal collaboration we’re involved in is the Standards Coordination Umbrella Group (SCUG), the formation of which was catalysed by the CCBG last year.
ISSUE 03 2014
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52