Gösta Kallner and Julian Stafford of 450 MHz Alliance recently attended the TCCA event and CCBG #20. The two-day forum covered a wide range of topics including the ongoing work to adopt 700 MHz for mission critical services and an overview of planned blue-light deployments in the range of countries including South Korea, France, Belgium and the UK.

There was significant discussion around the increasing ecosystem of chip set and device manufacturers along with the need for further standardisation globally in order that the end user community can benefit from the economies of scale which a larger addressable market can bring. Increased collaboration between user groups with similar requirements was identified as key for sharing best practice and further developing additional functionality in future LTE / 5G standards.

There was also significant discussion on how best to migrate from legacy narrow band systems (P25 & TETRA) toward the inevitable adoption of broadband wireless technology. Also presented were several interesting discussions around the virtues of private vs public networks (with enhancements) and the options available for hybrid solutions. During the event there was also a brief presentation in order to formalise the recently agreed Memorandum of Understanding between TCCA and the European Utilities Telecoms Council http://www.criticalcomms.com/news/eutc-and-tcca-sign-mou-to-examine-critical-broadband-networks-for-utilities-1

A short presentation from Julian Stafford explained the critical nature of connectivity from a utility perspective and provided a background into the ‘paradigm shift’ which is now taking place in the monitoring and control of energy networks – i.e. the transition to the smart grid. The evolution to a smart grid demands significant enhancements to data throughput, supported device volumes, availability and coverage – all of which make the potential for private LTE networks in the 400 MHz region highly attractive to the utility sector.

The TCCA event culminated with a visit to the NATO cybersecurity centre of excellence – providing a fascinating overview into the work of this group in the fields of cyber security affecting all critical national infrastructure and the annual ‘Locked Shields’ cyber defense exercise https://ccdcoe.org.

The event is a further example of the continuing outreach from the 450 MHz Alliance to other groups and forums on a global basis with similar mission critical requirements including rail, utilities and emergency services.