FirstNet PTT service - provided by AT&T and built on 3GPP mission-critical-push-to-talk (MCPTT) standard - delivers the performance that public safety needs and can be an LMR alternative for some agencies, according to the captain of a New Jersey police department that conducted a beta trial of the new offering.
"I think it's really going to be a game-changer for public safety communications," Capt. Guy Patterson of the Cranford (N.J.) police department said during an interview with IWCE's Urgent Communications.
"I absolutely see [FirstNet PTT] as a replacement, especially as this current generation of LMR inevitably advances to whatever the next generation is. When it's time to make that move, and you have to do a very large capital project to update your infrastructure and everything else, it makes perfect sense just to abandon the LMR completely and go with the FirstNet Push to Talk."