Kevin Graham, TCCA CEO
TCCA promotes the use of standardised technologies to deliver mission-critical communication systems that are secure, available, resilient, interoperable and, ultimately, trusted. It also supports other standardised narrowband technologies, and with the establishment of its Critical Communications Broadband Group (CCBG) some 14 years ago, TCCA recognised the need to deploy 3GPP mobile broadband critical communications, which in many cases will complement or replace narrowband networks.
We are now in the 5G era, and with 5G rollouts advancing, the opportunities to further enhance critical communications are becoming clear. 5G is an ever-evolving technology with new features still being added. For example, network slicing is designed to allocate specific required resources to meet the requirements of different user groups, while multi-access edge computing (MEC) servers can enable low latency applications by moving processing closer to the edge.
Through 5G innovative features and technological innovation, 5G is envisioned to support unprecedented and diverse mission critical applications and use cases. These include:
5G technology will essentially deliver improvements to users in two distinct ways: enhancing use cases initially enabled by 4G LTE in terms of scaling up these services to more users within a given locality; and addressing new and emerging use cases made possible with advancements in technology such as ultra-low latency mobile connectivity. Both will provide important user benefits, ranging from enhanced situational awareness – using advanced video recognition capability, artificial intelligence analysis of data collection and new immersive user applications – to greater use of remote and specialist expert analysis of incident ground environments for first responders. The information between agencies can be shared more easily via cloud-based application platforms. The net result is that the cooperation between first responders can be more effective and efficient, improving the safety of users and saving the lives of others. From a technology perspective, 5G will provide a plethora of new capabilities, most notably enhancing mobile broadband services with ultra-reliable low latency communications and supporting massive machine-type device deployments. Whilst these capabilities will be available across all bands, lower sub-1GHz spectrum allowing greater macro coverage while the benefit of some will be more pronounced at higher frequencies due to correspondingly larger channel bandwidths supporting higher capacities.
Security has been one of the main considerations in 3GPP standards development, ensuring that the resulting technology is trustworthy. Each generation of 3GPP standards has incorporated security improvements – underpinned by advancements in hardware and software – and against the backdrop of an ever-evolving threat landscape. Hence the security of 5G is a further enhancement over 4G LTE.
The global ecosystem committed to 5G will undoubtedly drive further standardisation and development of mission-critical services. Industry is also investing in and delivering solutions capable of providing new ways of monitoring network performance and assuring service levels using complementary software technologies such as automation, analytics, and artificial intelligence.
5G continues to make inroads in Africa. According to the GSMA as of September 2023, 27 operators in 16 markets across the region had launched commercial 5G services. More markets are expected to follow, with operators in an additional 10 countries making a commitment to launch 5G. 5G coverage in the region is still mostly limited to major cities, but there is growing evidence that 5G coverage is ramping up in some countries. In South Africa, for example, 5G coverage reached 41% of the population as of September 2023.
Whilst a significant amount of progress has been made by the critical communications community in establishing mission-critical broadband spectrum, standards, technology and a competitive marketplace, there is still more to achieve. We must continue to expand collaboration efforts with commercial mobile network operators (MNOs) to deliver and enhance mission critical mobile broadband services for critical communication users, leveraging 3GPP defined capabilities and utilising shared and/or dedicated spectrum for private deployments and rapid deployables.
We must continue to prioritise, resource and support further 3GPP-driven standards definition and testing for features of particular benefit to the critical communications community and drive conformance, certification and interoperability.
We must continue to identify any new 5G functionality that could be of benefit to critical network operators looking to deploy solutions involving multiple MNO infrastructures and hybrid private/commercial options, such as improvements in handover performance, security and interworking and interoperability in general.
The work of TCCA enables international collaboration on service deployment experiences and sharing of best practice. We recognise that the introduction of a next-generation technology requires careful consideration, including aspects such as coverage, security, resilience, capacity, performance, interoperability, and integration into user operations. In general, each organisation will, at their own pace, go through an evolution process, this technology shift providing the opportunity for new operational models to become institutionalised over time.
TCCA’s vision is advancing global critical communications for a safer, more connected world. Our mission is to empower critical communication users with secure, trusted, and standardised technologies. We will work to help ensure that 5G fulfils its full potential in helping the critical communications sector deliver the best possible services and support for those users.
