European Countries Moving To Procurement For Public Safety Lte Broadband Network
January 8, 2021
Public Safety Technology 2018 Year In Review
January 8, 2021
Our January 8th blog highlighted the most notable public safety broadband communications developments we observed in 2018. Now, looking ahead to 2019, instead of making new year’s resolutions – i.e., those outcomes we hope will come to fruition – we thought we would share our public safety technology forecast for the year – identifying those outcomes we believe will occur.
In December 2019, we’ll provide you with a status of each of the below elements to evaluate how our forecast stacked up in the ever evolving and dynamic public safety technology industry.
Here we go with the 2019 top 10 list….
- Public safety will leverage rich data in the field due to the proliferation of first responders being equipped with reliable and resilient public safety LTE. The desire to have better situational awareness from the PSAP will drive a significant increase in consumption of mobile lifesaving data in 2019.
- Continued consolidation in the land mobile radio (LMR) market. Significant strides being made in public safety LTE are putting pressure on LMR providers to innovate and rethink their legacy business models.
- Ongoing consolidation and transition of legacy public safety computer aided dispatch (CAD) companies as the industry finally moves into cloud-based platforms that will enable rich data going to public safety over LTE in the field.
- An uptick in public safety technology startups focused on empowering public safety with lifesaving technologies that are provided “as a service.”
- Operational Mobility: Seamless communications groups, access to information, and the ability of devices to detect and connect to the best network in a given location.
- A global push to deploy public safety LTE networks similar to the successful deployment of FirstNet in the United States. Specifically, we predict that public safety broadband services will be offered in at least 3 countries other than the United States in 2019.
- Venture investment in Series A or earlier rounds will exceed $75 million for start-up public safety technology companies, and follow-on investments for Series B or later rounds will exceed $100 million.
- Public safety will begin to embrace wearables for public safety dispatch and situational awareness, including the expansion of CAD over wearables.
- An increase in hardened and/or specialized LTE handsets for public safety (at least 2 new offerings in 2019).
- The number of agencies embracing prioritized broadband LTE services for critical communications will double over 2018 levels.
- An increase in the use of mobile wireless broadband telemedicine and systems by EMTs and paramedics in the field to improve continuity of patient care.
We are looking forward to another exciting year of growth in our industry, with an unprecedented focus on functional integrations, such as those anticipated with situational awareness and CAD, as well as increased migration to public safety LTE for both data and voice.
