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NOKIA’S PSMB PUSH Jonathan Nally
T
he provision of public safety mobile broadband (PSMB) is perhaps the leading source of discussion in missioncritical circles these days, with a number of models being proposed to provide the service. There are also lots of discussions about which companies are going to be the ones to capitalise on the opportunities inherent in PSMB and which are going to be left behind. So it’s interesting to see that Nokia, perhaps best known for its mobile phones, is making a concerted push back into the public safety market. The company exhibited for the first time at the Comms Connect Melbourne event in December and sent one of its most senior executives — Hermann Rodler, Global Head of Public Safety — to be on hand to speak to attendees about the company’s solutions. To find out what Nokia has planned for the market, we spoke with Rodler on the eve of Comms Connect. Nokia’s re-emergence into the public safety field has come as a surprise to many. What is the reasoning behind it? Nokia has been in the public safety field for a long time; in fact, we have been working with government customers — such as
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defence organisations, security agencies and other government organisations — for the past 60 years. If we look at the way public safety networks has evolved, the current systems — such as TETRA or Project 25 and TETRAPOL — provide mission-critical communication services, but they are limited in data connectivity. With the emergence of LTE as a cost-efficient enabler for fast and reliable mobile broadband — high data rates, carrier-grade experience and high availability of networks and service level agreements (SLAs), quality of service differentiation and a high level of security — it has become an obvious option for public safety communications. This is why many governments and operators in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, the US and Korea are evaluating the advantages of incorporating mobile broadband into their public safety systems. Nokia is a leading supplier of LTE technology across the globe and we support seven out of the 10 largest LTE customers in the Asia Pacific and Japan region. Furthermore, Nokia has already released a 5G proof of concept in Korea and demonstrated a record-breaking wireless speed of 19.1 Gbps, which makes for an interesting future for mobile broadband that can be leveraged in public safety too. We are
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