Samsung hosts International Standards Meeting on public safety

BENGALURU: Samsung R&D Institute India (SRI-B) hosted the 11th meeting of 3GPP SA6 standards, first time ever in India from May 23 to May 27, on Public Safety at Bengaluru. While the previous meetings enabled standards for voice communications using LTE during mission critical stage, the current meeting focused on enabling data and video services for mission critical communications over LTE. The MCPTT standard is expected to be deployed soon in countries such as Korea, UK, and USA, followed by many countries around the world.

With increasing events of natural calamities and man-made disasters, Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) management is of utmost interest to the governments and research communities around the world. To ensure critical communications during these unfortunate times, technologies such as Mission Critical Push-to-Talk (MCPTT) based services have received industry attention. And to develop interoperable standards for public safety services, 3 rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards, has established a new working group – SA6, which is chartered to develop global technical standards for Mission Critical Applications.

While addressing the delegates, Dr Aloknath De, Corporate VP & CTO, Samsung R&D Institute India emphasized, “Samsung is a strong supporter of global standards to enable interoperability and wider eco-system of standards-based products and services. National Disaster Management Authority in India and other countries are looking forward to an effective solution for public safety”. He also stressed that more such meetings would further help Indian researchers to contribute actively in standards bodies.

The SA6 delegation visiting Bangalore included members from across the world representing approximately 30 multi-national companies as well representatives from public safety community and industry experts from within India.

SA6 Chairman Yannick Lair said, “LTE standards, initially developed for commercial networks, have been improved for critical communications, with enhancements for group communications and proximity services. On top of this, SA6 is building a common mission critical application architecture for voice, video and data.”

“Samsung India is one of the very few research labs in India whose engineers represent in multiple global standards bodies and hold several key leadership positions. Standards development is an integral part of our research strategy,” said Dr Manoj Choudhary, Director, Research Strategy at Samsung R&D Institute India. Suresh Chitturi from SRI-B holds the Vice-Chairman position of 3GPP SA6 Working Group, whose engagement and leadership in the development of MCPTT standard in Release-13 was crucial for the timely completion.

The deliberations from this meeting, particularly on enabling data and video for mission critical communications, will be included in Release 14 of 3GPP standard. Further, LTE-standards can be expected to be the baseline for next generation broadband public safety networks and bring advantages to both commercial cellular and public safety community.