Public Safety Advocate: Apple’s ProSe Patent, Useful or Useless?
Apple was recently issued a U.S. Patent that will be or won’t be useful to public safety professionals in the field. As always, it will be up to the public…
Proximity Services (ProSe)
Public Safety Advocate: Marketing Products, Questions to Answer
As you read this Advocate, keep in mind that there are proven ways to bring new products and services to market. For example, once the cost to produce a product is…
Public Safety Advocate: FirstNet (Built with AT&T) Announces More Communications Tools
At IWCE 2022, FirstNet announced a new, significant upgrade to FirstNet (Built with AT&T) that prompted me to write about communications tools for first responders. One of these tools is…
Public Safety Advocate: More IWCE, Throwback April Fool’s, Rural Broadband
I am disappointed that I cannot find the archived article I wrote a number of years ago and published on April Fool’s Day. I had described how I was at…
Public Safety Advocate: IWCE, Who Will Be First to Implement Truly Unified PTT? More IWCE Next Week
The IWCE made a triumphant return with IWCE 2022! Some may say it was smaller than earlier IWCEs or perhaps the show floor did not have as many vendors, but…
Public Safety Advocate: FirstNet Authority Off-Network Communications Solutions RFI, L3Harris, HPUE
APCO 2021 The APCO 2021 conference is taking place in San Antonio this week. Many attendees come from the public-safety community or are involved in some way with public-safety communications….
Public Safety Advocate: PTT vs. MCPTT, 5G Sweet Spot, FirstNet Apps Verified/Certified, 4.9 GHz, Fiber, and More
First, some clarification. “Mission-Critical Push-To-Talk” (MCPTT) is the form of Push-To-Talk (PTT) the 3GPP standards body developed in accordance with its PTT standard. However, networks, including FirstNet (Built with AT&T),…
Public Safety Advocate: ProSe Panned, Second-Generation PTT, QuickRoute
This week there are a number of items of interest for those involved in public-safety communications. A rugged handheld device company has given up on ProSe while a Push-To-Talk (PTT)…
Public Safety Advocate: Looking Back and Ahead
This second 2021 Advocate is the last before the swearing in of the new administration. This week, we look back at the Nashville Bombing and why there was a delay in restoring…
Public Safety Advocate: The FirstNet Authority Roadmap
Welcome to November 2020. The election is finally behind us, Covid-19 continues to wreak havoc in the United States, and the number of wildfires, major storms, and hurricanes continue to…
Public Safety Advocate: P25 and MCPTT Feature Comparison
Over the years, the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) has developed and published a large number of documents to provide Land Mobile Radio (LMR) and broadband network operators, public-safety…
Public Safety Advocate: Off-Network Communications
Welcome to June! May is in the books and now we are looking forward to what June might have in store for us. Public-safety agencies around the United States and…
Public Safety Advocate: Lack of Broadband PTT Interoperability, T-Mobile, Ligado
Recently, there has been a flurry of articles in the press, on Twitter, and on LinkedIn touting the advantages of Push-To-Talk over Broadband (PTT over LTE) and stressing that PTT…
Public Safety Advocate: The Year in Review
In this last Advocate of the year, we will look back at 2019 to see what has been accomplished in the world of public-safety communications as well as what has been left…
Public Safety Advocate: Looking Back, Looking Forward, and Firstnet Devices
As I comb through my Advocates since the middle of 2010, I continue to find more to add to the book that is underway. I also find topics that are still applicable…