#Ptt att upgrade#
#Ptt att full#

This will be an important addition since many FirstNet agencies and users have chosen an iPhone for their FirstNet communications. One of these new features will be 3GPP-compliant PTT on iOS devices. Most of these new offerings have to do with push-to-talk including PTT that meets the 3GPP standard for Mission-Critical Push-To-Talk (MCPT PTT) products available on FirstNet. In a keynote address at IWCE 2022, FirstNet (Built with AT&T) suggested that more tools would soon be available. No matter, that multicast is finally available on FirstNet is very good news for first responders. If so, would the message have to be sent to specific cell sites, or will it be sent nationwide? I suspect it will be possible to use one-to-many in different areas including districts, citywide, countywide, and perhaps statewide but so far, I have not been able to verify that eMBS will be this flexible. So far, I have not been able to obtain enough information to determine if the one-to-many feature can be used for a district broadcast. The only remaining question is when, exactly, will eMBS become available to public-safety agencies using FirstNet?ĮMBS adds this one-to-many capability to FirstNet. Regardless, multicast will become yet another valuable tool and a welcome addition to the FirstNet network.

#Ptt att full#

If it can be sent to specific cell sites, it could also be used to broadcast and stream video to an entire stadium full of people and this might result in a reduction of the data capacity needed during a sporting event or concert. Once I have information on exactly how multicast can be sliced and diced, I will include it in a future Advocate.

If so, would the message have to be sent to specific cell sites, or will it be sent nationwide? I suspect it will be possible to use one-to-many in different areas including districts, citywide, countywide, and perhaps statewide, but so far, I have not been able to verify that eMBS will be this flexible. This is not multicasting.ĮMBS adds this one-to-many capability to FirstNet. Text messages can be sent to multiple recipients but each text message is sent sequentially to each person. Meanwhile, the majority of the traffic on cellular systems has been one-to-one because this is what these networks were designed for.

From its beginning, LMR has been able to reach groups or an entire city with a single broadcast. Most metro areas have additional LMR channels for citywide communications. In major metro areas where a city is divided into districts, each district might be on its own LMR channel or, in a trunked system, the district will have a group that is set up to include everyone within that district. Police, fire, and EMS units and personnel can be dispatched simultaneously with a single transmission from the Emergency Communications Center (ECC) or dispatch center using LMR. Those of us who “grew up” with LMR have taken one-to-many communications for granted. Multicast, or eMBS, is important because it not only supports one-to-many broadcasts over the network, it adds yet another attribute which, until now, only Land Mobile Radio (LMR) could provide.

The most significant effect I see with multicasting videos is that this activity consumes much more bandwidth than PTT. This network enhancement makes it possible to send Push-To-Talk (PTT) voice, data, and video to multiple devices simultaneously (multicasting).

#Ptt att upgrade#

One of these tools is actually an upgrade to the network that many of us have been expecting for a long time. At IWCE 2022, FirstNet announced a new, significant upgrade to FirstNet (Built with AT&T) that prompted me to write about communications tools for first responders.