Official resource
Interoperability Continuum
The federal framework for communications interoperability, covering governance, standard operating procedures, technology, training and usage.
Radio, FirstNet, and Broadband: What Is Different?
LMR, FirstNet, commercial cellular networks, Wi-Fi, priority, and preemption solve different communications problems. Learn why broadband supplements mission-critical radio rather than simply replacing it.
The short version
Land mobile radio, public-safety broadband, commercial cellular and Wi-Fi each solve a different problem, and the vocabulary around them — P25, Band 14, LTE and 5G, priority, preemption, coverage, capacity — gets used loosely in sales conversations. The distinction worth holding onto is this: voice interoperability and broadband connectivity are related, but they are not the same problem. A department can have excellent broadband coverage and still have radio interoperability challenges.
Start here
If you read one thing on this subject, read this.
Go deeper
Official resource
The FirstNet network
How the public safety broadband network is built, prioritized and deployed.
Official resource
SAFECOM resources
Vendor-neutral guidance on public safety communications, including funding and governance material.
Official resource
About FirstNet
The public authority behind the responder broadband network, as distinct from the carrier that operates it.
Why it matters
Useful for separating what the network is committed to from what a sales team describes.
Questions to ask your vendor
- Which of our operations depend on mission-critical voice, and which depend on data?
- Where do we actually have coverage gaps, and are they voice or data gaps?
- What happens to our data traffic when the commercial network is congested?
- Who do we need voice interoperability with, and have we tested it?
- What is our plan when a single network — radio or broadband — fails?
This is a reading list, not a guide
Everything above was published by someone else, and is here because it is the clearest treatment of the subject we could find and verify. The Hub’s own guide to this topic is still being written. If you know a better source than the ones listed, that is worth telling us before it is.
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