Public Safety Standards Alliance says it complements standards work
A new public safety communications organization says that it seeks to help vendors, carriers and public safety communications users agree on the best standards for public safety comms needs and ensure interoperability among them.
The Public Safety Technology Alliance counts former First Responders Network Authority President TJ Kennedy as its co-founder and CEO.
“The PSTA is not a standards-making body — there are plenty of standards-making bodies out there that are creating new standards,” said Jason Karp, former FirstNet counsel and now vice president and board secretary for PSTA. Instead, he said, PSTA will focus on “identifying the best-in-class standards, agreeing on what those area, adopting and certifying them — so that all these new technologies that are now available for public safety … can interoperate.”
Kennedy and Karp are also co-founders of an advisory firm, The Public Safety Network, that they started after leaving FirstNet. It focuses on advising companies on partnerships and application development for serving the public safety communications market.
AT&T is part of PSTA, as is Verizon. and Verizon recently joined as well. Other initial members include JVCKenwood, Microsoft, Secured Communications, Sonim Technologies, and TRX Systems.
“Public safety is going to use a lot more than just wireless technologies,” said Karp. “They’re using applications and new types of connected devices and cloud storage, some of which have standards, some of which may not.” But, he said, when first responders use, say, a mission-critical push-to-talk application from one vendor, it’s crucial that they can communicate with other first responders who may be using an application from a different vendor.
Karp noted that while 3GPP defines the MC-PTT standard, companies within the ecosystem decide how to implement the standard and that can mean that different vendors’ implementations may not interoperate or offer the exact same features.
“Just because there are open standards doesn’t mean that two technologies can work together,” Karp said, adding, “what PSTA wants to do is sit in the middle [and say], ‘whatever MC-PTT app you are developing, it must at least have these [3GPP features] that we all agree on.” He pointed to mapping applications as one example of an app where multiple options from different vendors — and sometimes different options from the same vendor — may not support departments being able to actually share information with functional interoperability.
PSTA certification would go beyond the device and application certification that an individual carrier — such as Verizon or AT&T-FirstNet — requires for use on their respective networks. Asked whether such interoperability would address the question of network core access (such as, say, whether Verizon could directly connect its public safety core to FirstNet’s core) that has been raised as a concern for application interoperability between FirstNet-AT&T and Verizon, Karp said that “PSTA is not going to be involved in addressing those issues,” saying that questions about core interconnections are more appropriately addressed by FirstNet and Congress.
“The ability for [public safety] to use these new technologies in ways that they just work, is going to save lives,” Karp said.
The First Responders Network Authority, contacted for comment on PSTA, issued a statement saying that it is “supportive of and committed to ensuring open standards for public safety as those standards are established within the appropriate venues.”
