Unanswered Questions
Last week I attended and moderated a panel at the IWCE LTE Communications forum in Dallas. The event was well attended, the panel sessions were very good and informative, and I was able to meet and spend time with more Advocate readers and others. All in all, it was a good trip and well worth it. However, during the forum I asked two questions and neither was answered to everyone’s satisfaction. The answers were vague and did not address what I consider to be the current needs of the public safety community.
The first question had to do with why, after all this time, 5G will still be asynchronous (faster from the cell site to the device than from the device to the cell site). The second question concerned open standards and the ability for public safety agencies to make use of Push-To-Talk (PTT) applications they currently use or want to use. The questions were asked during different panels but the answers were similar and what I consider to be non-answers. During one of the breaks I was approached by a number of people who said they had the same questions and the responses they heard did not provide them with any real answers.
Based on the responses I received and the other attendees’ expressions of frustrations, I decided I would highlight these questions and discuss why the responses do not address the communications needs of the public safety community today. Both responses dealt with things becoming better sometime in the future (unspecified how long). Also in both cases, it was clear that no one is considering near-term solutions to help with day-to-day operations of the public safety community. Even after the final standards are published, there will have to be some tweaks to make today’s solutions compatible. Read the Entire Blog Here
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