How cellular networks are essential for first responder communication, coordination, and safety.
by Justin Livesay
Effective communication is the backbone of any emergency response. In critical situations, such as the recent California wildfires, first responders depend on robust communication systems to coordinate efforts, allocate resources, and ensure safety amidst rapidly changing conditions. Cellular networks have emerged as an indispensable tool, enabling seamless communication and real-time data sharing across vast areas.
Cellular networks are the only means of communication capable of supporting the diverse range of applications first responders use. They enable mission-critical communications and facilitate the transfer of real-time data, such as GPS location, weather updates, and live video feeds from the field, enhancing situational awareness and improving the safety of responders.
Aside from being omnipresent, cellular networks generally offer better resilience during disasters than landlines. If the physical infrastructure is damaged, landline services can be quickly disrupted over large areas. Mobile networks are overall less vulnerable to physical damage, and there are usually multiple network providers and backup systems: if one tower goes down, others may still be operational. Besides, cellular networks can be restored more quickly than landlines in the aftermath of a disaster. In many cases, network operators deploy temporary mobile cell towers to restore coverage quickly in disaster zones.
Cellular networks provide better coverage and are more versatile than land mobile radio: while radio function remains mainly in voice communication, cellular infrastructure can be easily integrated with other tools like GPS, emergency alert systems, or IoT devices for real-time monitoring.
Governments in many countries are working to leverage the widespread availability of mobile networks for emergency response purposes. The United States, New Zealand, and several European countries have already implemented dedicated cellular public safety networks. In the US, for example, a collaboration between AT&T and the First Responder Network Authority led to the creation of FirstNet, a dedicated spectrum for first responders designed to prevent network congestion. During emergencies, AT&T gives priority to FirstNet users, ensuring they have reliable communication access. If needed, the network can even prioritize first responders by suspending commercial traffic entirely, dedicating the network solely to emergency services.
First responders rely on cellular networks in many ways, both during and after the disasters and in their everyday work. Cellular connectivity plays a critical role in their communications, monitoring, and operations, enabling a wide variety of usage scenarios. Let’s take a look at some of the use cases:
The Evolution of Push-to-Talk: From LMR to Mission-Critical Cellular Networks
Push-to-Talk (PTT) radios become first responders’ primary means of communication in an emergency a long time ago. These two-way radios used to rely on Land Mobile Radio (LMR) networks and were limited by narrowband radio frequencies, which can suffer from congestion and limited coverage.
In 2016, 3GPP published Mission-Critical Push to Talk (MCPTT) standard that described how a PTT system should be implemented over existing cellular networks to serve the public safety and first responder community. The standard operates over LTE (4G) and 5G networks, offers enhanced features such as group calls, priority access, and more extensive coverage. MCCPTT is used both on dedicated PTT devices and smartphones that support MCPTT applications.
The transition from LMR-based systems to MCPTT is still ongoing, but major mobile operators already offer their MCPTT solutions and the adoption is likely to grow in the next 10 years.
Eyes in the Sky: The Role of Cellular-Enabled Drones
Cellular-enabled drones are widely used by fire departments, law enforcement agencies, search and rescue teams and emergency medical services teams. Drones can quickly reach emergency sites and provide real-time information to first responders to help them make informed decisions. These UAVs can be equipped with special thermal imaging and visual spectrum cameras – like thermal drones that help identify hotspots, track the spread of fires, or assess the intensity of the flames.
Light drones can be launched and operated faster than cars, helicopters or emergency vehicles, putting eyes on the incidents before additional personnel arrive.
Drones can be leveraged to help restore communication after disasters or assess the damage. Last year, in the wake of Hurricane Helene, cellular-enabled drones were used across some of the hardest-hit areas to collect crucial data on road blockages, asset damage, and debris accumulation, which is essential in the ongoing recovery efforts. The cellular link allowed for operations spanning 28 miles out, far exceeding the typical 3-mile range of traditional radio systems.
Real-Time Insights: Enhancing Emergency Response with Cellular-Connected Cameras
Many police officers, paramedics, and fire personnel are using body-worn cameras connected with cellular technology. These bodycams stream video footage over cellular networks in real-time to a secure cloud server or command center. This provides immediate access to live video, which can be vital for situational awareness, evidence gathering, or ensuring officer safety.
Another application for cellular-enabled cameras is connecting emergency medical teams out in the field with subject-matter experts over video, which is important for early diagnostics, to either treat in place, or make sure the patient gets delivered to the right hospital.
Enhanced Safety and Rapid Alerts with Cellular-Connected Devices
Oftentimes first responders carry devices equipped with SOS buttons to send an alert to dispatchers if they are in danger. Cellular networks help transmit this alert instantly, ensuring a fast response. Firefighters also use sensors that can measure hazardous environmental factors like gas levels. These devices, too, transmit data via cellular networks, providing real-time information on the scene’s safety.
Essential Connectivity Features for First Responders
Due to the variety of scenarios and devices involved, the full list of connectivity demands that first responders might have would be too long. However, there are features that are important for all devices, wherever they are put to use:
Ensuring Reliable Coverage Anywhere
Coverage is of utmost importance for any use case. Any type of data transmitted over cellular networks from the first responders’ devices is critical, be it a gas detection sensor or a camera. In some cases, the data that goes to the device is equally important – such as the command-and-control functions of a drone. Since first responders need to operate literally anywhere, including remote locations, it is critical that they can use any operator’s network.
Webbing guarantees coverage in over 190 countries and territories through partnerships with more than 600 mobile operators. Webbing’s solutions support connectivity across multiple networks in any location, minimizing the risk of downtime due to network outages or poor coverage.
Seamless Connectivity
Having access to multiple networks is essential, but every network may have its own weak spots. To ensure constant connectivity, the devices used by first responders should be capable of connecting to the strongest available network in any given location. For example, the drones that were flown during the recovery efforts after Hurricane Helene had four SIM cards onboard, which enabled them to switch seamlessly between the strongest network connections.
With Webbing’s connectivity solutions, a single SIM could achieve similar seamless multi-network access within a region, ensuring uninterrupted operation even in the most challenging environments. This kind of reliability is key for disaster response, where communications infrastructure is often compromised and every second counts.
Optimizing Latency and Bandwidth for First Responders
Latency is a crucial connectivity parameter for first responders, as their ability to quickly adapt to changing conditions in emergencies relies on it. In many cases, the safety of officers and the lives of others may depend on their ability to receive and act on information in real time. It may also affect the operations of drones and robots.
The actual latency varies depending on the architecture of the mobile operators’ core network: the data sent by the device needs to travel all the way to the connectivity provider’s data center before going to its destination.
Bandwidth is critical for cameras and other devices that transmit a lot of data. For example, in use cases with body worn cameras, live video streaming can be very demanding in terms of bandwidth, especially for high-definition content. Sufficient bandwidth also depends on the network solutions that your provider has implemented.
Webbing is a full MVNO, owning their core network, which is a fully redundant, distributed network with data centers on every continent. It features local breakouts and a variety of network solutions to support high-performance connectivity. Last year, Webbing further enhanced its global network by adding new data centers in Japan, Singapore, and Australia. This infrastructure allows to guarantee high data throughput and low latency to all connected devices.
Webbing’s Solutions Ensure Reliable Global Connectivity for Mission-Critical Operations
Webbing offers a connectivity solution that ensures global access to reliable and high-quality internet, with low latency and the best of class coverage. It provides secure and continuous internet connection for all types of cellular-enabled devices, wherever they need it.
As a global MVNO, Webbing’s network of 600+ mobile operators guarantee world-wide coverage. It allows roaming on several carriers’ networks in every region, solving the problem of weak spots that any mobile network may have and ensuring full coverage and continuous connectivity even at remote locations.
A distributed core network with local breakouts, multiple network solutions, and data server redundancy helps Webbing provide stable connections, high data throughput and low latency to all devices. As such, Webbing’s IoT network is well suited to support mission-critical, high-data consumption type of use cases.
Our eSIM solution ensures failover connectivity with the capability of using multiple mobile carrier profiles, easily changing carriers at any time with zero integration, and an option to fall back from a failing profile to a different profile without any need to communicate with a remote server or deal with multiple SIM cards.
Webbing also offers a centralized way to manage eSIMs throughout their lifecycle via a portal. It allows for defining business rules that govern the automatic profile swap process, enabling devices to change the carrier independently in case of location change or connectivity loss, and provides visibility to profile usage and network events.
A flexible approach to data packages allows us to tailor our connectivity offering for every customer based on the type of connected devices and their data consumption needs as well as the locations where the devices are used, aiming at overall optimization of the total cost of operations for the client.
Cellular networks play a pivotal role in emergency response, empowering first responders with reliable, versatile, and high-performance connectivity. Webbing’s solutions ensure that emergency teams have the tools they need to communicate, coordinate, and save lives, no matter the circumstances.
Discover how Webbing can enhance connectivity for your emergency response operations. Contact us to learn more.