The days of 2G and 3G calling are numbered. With the deployment of LTE (News - Alert), voice over LTE (VoLTE) is poised to become the dominant platform for mobile voice. What does this move to VoLTE mean for emergency services, however?
Well, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC (News - Alert)) pretty clearly outlines how VoLTE must respond to emergency calls. E911 is a must for providers as of January 18 of this year, and it spells out how providers must facilitate emergency calls.
As we noted in January, new handsets must meet location accuracy standards for 911 calls, being accurate within 50 meters for 67 percent of all calls and accurate to 150 meters for 80 percent of calls. New carriers must be tested and measured for accuracy, too, and carriers must provide confidence and uncertainty data on a per-call basis when requested.
Further, all E911 system service providers must implement modifications to improve confidence and decrease uncertainty.
The details of how to get there are still being worked out, however.
One question is ensuring location accuracy. To that end, Spirent Communications (News - Alert) just announced two weeks ago that its 8100 Location Technology Solution (LTS) now offers support for end-to-end VoLTE E911 testing.
“As North American carriers race to successfully deploy VoLTE, they also recognize their requirement to provide FCC-mandated E911 services,” noted the company.
The Spirent 8100 LTS solution supports testing the initiation of a VoLTE E911 call on mobile devices in conjunction with a location session that provides an end-user’s position. Besides assessing the performance of position fixes, the 8100 solution ensures that VoLTE calls are maintained with sufficient quality while concurrently calculating position fixes.
LTE also has application in the field, helping emergency responders communicate.
Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) recently demonstrated its voice-over-IMS and RCS presence technology to the Board of FirstNet (the First Responder Network Authority), an important step in the adoption of industry standards-based Public Safety LTE in broadband voice and data communications for emergency services according to Alcatel-Lucent.
Voice support on the FirstNet network will help reduce costs by providing first responders with the option to use a single device for both data and non-mission critical voice communications, according to the company. It also will extend interoperability beyond data to voice communications.
Further, LTE is already becoming the defacto requirement for certain public safety situations. In public safety deployments, a portable core network that can offer local services at disaster sites for not only voice but also for multi-media applications is quite desirable. For this, LTE is a prime technology for delivering voice call service as well as data over a single core radio access technology.
In other words, LTE is finding immediate adoption as a technology that can upgrade emergency service in the field and bridge the gap between emergency services of the past and the digital calling that is the present and future.
Edited by Blaise McNamee