12 Jun 2017

First European mission critical LTE test set for June

The first interoperability test sessions for mission-critical LTE equipment will take place later this month at the ETSI headquarters in Sophia Antipolis, France.

The tests are being carried out in partnership with the TCCA, and are supported by the European Commission. It will be the first time that the interoperability of mission critical push to talk (MCPTT) products and services has been evaluated in Europe.

A spokesperson for the TCCA said: “The goal of the MCPTT plugtests event is to validate the interoperability of different solutions using various scenarios and test cases.

“The tests will be based on 3GPP, ETSI and IETF standards, and are designed to trial independently and jointly all components of the MCPTT communication chain such as group call, floor control, unicast and multicast communication.”

The spokesperson continued: “To ensure that [PTT] capability is built into LTE services, 3GPP has been catalysed by the work of the TCCA to ensure that LTE supports mission-critical communications, with MCPTT now specified in 3GPP Release 13.”

Ahead of the event, the ETSI centre for testing and interoperability has organised pre-testing sessions with 20 vendors. According to the TCCA, more than 100 combinations will have been tested by the end of the event in June. The test specification includes 45 test cases.