Monday 23 September 2013

Push to talk (PTT) via eMBMS


I was talking about push to share back in 2007 here. Now, in a recent presentation (embedded below) from ALU, eMBMS has been suggested as a a solution for PTT like services in case of Public safety case. Not sure if or when we will see this but I hope that its sooner rather than later. Anyway, the presentation is embedded below. Feel free to add your comments:



2 comments:

Juan Pablo Calvo Perez (via LTE - 3GPP group on Linkedin) said...

Hello Zahid:

It is quite possible, but a lot of work to be made before. It is not so easy to deploy eMBMS and voila! You have PTT functionality. Specific features need to be added in 3GPP Release 12 and also a complementary work needed in OMA Requirements group to standardize the ecosystem. The PoC enabler need to be improved to PoC 2.1 or PoC 3.0 and also other enablers related. I was involved in the PoC enabler development in PoC Group in OMA until 2008 and I remember the problem to have an enabler feasible to Public Safety was matter of MBMS in Release 6/7. In GPRS and UMTS this feature was not developed so deep as in the Release 9 and 10. Now with the eMBMS it´s easier to be adopted and the LTE access network is also very helpful.

Anyway I think this feature would be complementary to a specific Public Safety Network but not a substitution....until now. In the future we will see, probably, more interesting features to make a switch.

Alistair URIE (via LTE - 3GPP group on Linkedin) said...

From what i understand there is significant work on this topic in TIA TR8. The working assumption seems to be that OMA PoC is not really the right starting point. I think that an IMS based solution will be eventually defined but one that is more suited to public safety requirements. eMBMS will need to be part of the solution to handle PTT listeners but talkers will obviously need a bidirectional dedicated bearer.