Increasing Threats Amplify the Need for Reliable Mobile Communications for Public Safety, said Frost
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Governments and federal authorities across the world stepped up strategies to enhance the quality of emergency services against the backdrop of increasing terrorist attacks and natural disasters.
The pressing need for securing communications for mission-critical applications gives rise to breakthrough innovations, especially in network traffic management, capacity allocation, and resource-intensive information exchange. The initiatives strive to unify the functionality of independent emergency service agencies by establishing a strong interoperable public safety communication platform.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan finds that the conventional public safety communication standards would dominate in the next two years. The rise of wireless broadband technologies and software architecture-based radios will be the public safety communication standards in the future.
"Fast, efficient and effective response to public safety threats requires superior coordination between law enforcers, emergency medical units, and fire squads, among others," notes Technical Insights Research Analyst Anand Srinivasan. "In order to coordinate the activities of the aforementioned teams, reliable mobile communication is an absolute necessity."
As governments worldwide are committed to providing public safety, mobile communications will succeed in this segment as long as avid government and federal body support exists.
The commercial communications segment is witnessing fast-paced progress, with the introduction of wireless broadband networks. IP-based interoperable, multimedia communications are entering the public safety arena in a big way. This is expected to drive technology innovations, provide improved performance, and enhance interoperability without having to invest in new infrastructure.
Although the market prospects look upbeat, some impediments stalling market progression exist. Bandwidth insufficiency is widely acknowledged to be a persistent challenge in most aspects of communications and in public safety communications, where several multimedia applications require significant channel capacity. New bandwidth hungry applications are continuously introduced for public safety operations, which inevitably would call for higher bandwidths in the near future.
Another major challenge is interoperability. In the current scenario, it is essential for developers to enhance capabilities by embedding multi-agency interoperability in radios. Interoperability problems are most intense during coalition operations when multiple public safety agencies cannot share critical intelligence and real-time situational awareness with each other.
Many governments eased their regulatory environments by lowering the barriers to entry for foreign companies and releasing dedicated spectrum for public safety. Industry majors and smaller companies have come together and formed associations/groups to develop and promote a particular public safety communication standard. These associations have also undertaken incremental R&D efforts to improve their technologies in sync with market demands.
"The key demands from the end users include flexibility, coverage, on-demand service, interoperability, availability and performance of the public safety communication systems," says Srinivasan. "The emerging opportunity segments in the public safety communications domain include TETRA enhanced data service (TEDS), Phase-III of P25 standard, long term evolution (LTE), worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), software defined radio (SDR), and cognitive radio (CR)."
