Verizon and Motorola Solutions bring interoperable broadband communications to public safety

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. and CHICAGO – Verizon Public Sector and Motorola Solutions today announce Group First Response, a mission-critical push-to-talk solution that leverages LTE to enable first responders to communicate seamlessly via voice, data and video across a variety of devices — improving situational awareness and operational efficiency. Group First Response can be integrated with land mobile radio (LMR) systems, extending interoperable push-to-talk communications to public safety users without radios or outside coverage areas.

Group First Response is based on the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards for mission-critical push-to-talk (MCPTT) communication, which include quality of service and network priority and preemption for public safety, as well as fast setup time. In addition, Group First Response complements the capabilities provided by LMR networks, providing multimedia messaging, mission-critical data and live video streaming. Using Motorola Solutions’ Critical Connect service, which is based on a cloud-based interoperability gateway and infrastructure, Group First Response provides MCPTT functionality to those outside of an LMR network, so that first responders have more ways to communicate critical information and formulate faster, more effective responses. By augmenting public safety LMR networks with solutions like Group First Response, it relieves capacity on an agency’s primary radio system, providing additional security, coverage, and most importantly, redundancy.

“For first responders, the ability to communicate using text, voice and video is essential to protecting the citizens they are duty-bound to serve and themselves,” said Vickie Lonker, vice president public sector product development at Verizon. “Group First Response leverages Verizon’s award-winning 4G LTE network, providing interoperability and critical communications features needed in mission-critical situations.”

With Group First Response, end users can make secure group and private calls via voice and video, share files and multimedia, and use features such as role-based logins, which are configured to give them the right features, contacts and talkgroups based on different roles. In addition, dispatchers can initiate on-the-fly group calls, demand or request video, see location and location history, and create area-based talkgroups.

“Public safety agencies rely on LMR for reliable and resilient voice communications and also recognize the situational insights and operational efficiencies that LTE data can offer,” said John Zidar, senior vice president, Global Enterprise & Channels, Motorola Solutions. “Multimedia interoperability across networks and devices is increasingly crucial, and the introduction of Group First Response gives first responders the most feature-rich, carrier-integrated MCPTT solution on the market for unprecedented awareness and collaboration.”