World Telecommunication Day: Smart Cities Need Smart Public Safety
BOURNE END, England – May 19, 2025 – Zebra Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: ZBRA), a global leader in digitising and automating frontline workflows, marked WorldTelecommunication Day, May 17, 2025 by highlighting emerging trends and opportunities for public safety organisations.
The public safety critical communications landscape is undergoing significant evolution as organisations transition from legacy narrowband digital radio services such as TETRA to more advanced broadband solutions.
While TETRA has served critical communications in public safety since the 1990s, there are some well-established limitations to overcome to meet the needs of modern public safety operations. Challenges include low data bandwidth, limited spectrum availability, coverage limitations, a lack of device options and application ecosystems, limited compatibility with modern broadband technologies and issues around vendor support and upgrades.
"Migrating to broadband facilitates increased bandwidth, lower latency, and improved user experiences," said David Gibbs, Senior Regional Product Manager, Enterprise Mobile Computing, Zebra Technologies. "The integration supports a wider range of applications, including real-time data sharing and video communications. With the right mobile computers, emergency service teams could also leverage AI and augmented reality applications in the field. Smart cities require smart public safety services, but this requires the right device and network infrastructure to be useful."
Growth in Operational Data Driving Need
The shift to broadband is driven by the increasing need for higher data rates and improved multimedia communication, particularly in frontline operations such as digital evidence management, real-time data sharing, and incident reporting. Frontline teams require efficient communication methods like voice, text, radio, and video calls in dynamic situations, necessitating high-performance mobile broadband to enhance existing land mobile radio (LMR) networks. This demand for data-driven processes is crucial for improving situational awareness and service efficiency, enabling agencies to consume and generate data more effectively in the field.
Moving Forward Together
The rollout speed of networks is influenced by cost, standards, and spectrum availability, with a trend toward adopting third generation partnership project (3GPP) mission-critical long-term evolution (LTE) services for voice, data, and video support, while the increasing availability of hybrid devices combining LMR and LTE technology ensures seamless mobility and network selection.
Using electronic multimedia broadcast multicast services (eMBMS) for multi-cast support will be critical, especially in high density areas such as football stadiums, protests, public order scenarios, and transport hubs.
Different agencies will progress at different paces, and there are regional variations in 5G rollout. This also means interoperability will be critical. Frontline teams need devices that can communicate with other LTE/broadband devices as well as narrowband devices.
"Organisations will need to move forward together, with enough flexibility for the fast movers to leverage newer mobile computing on modern broadband, without losing essential lines of communication with other agencies that are still leveraging narrowband devices and will switch to broadband devices at a later date," said Gibbs.
Public Safety Organisations Face Cyber Threats
Cybersecurity in critical communications is highly important in terms of the personal and operational data. The nature of the data being captured, shared and analysed in policing roles, for example, requires the highest level of protection and would prove an attractive target for threat actors, such as hackers, organised crime gangs and terrorists.
One capital city fire and rescue service said it blocked over 300,000 cyberattacks last year, while a major police service in a European city and several ambulance services have experienced possible data breaches after unauthorised access was gained to systems of suppliers that held confidential first responder data. In other cases, emergency services have suffered ransomware attacks, including one reported attack targeting a key supplier supporting an ambulance radio programme which connects ambulances to central teams and other emergency services.
"When we think about security, we should be focusing on device security from the inside out. This should include Secure and Verified Boot and devices that meet ISO 19790 and ISO 15408 standards, whilst maintaining regular Android OS updates. Additional security layers like Secure Element, SSO and secure biometrics should be deployed to secure devices, and smart cabinets installed for devices to be charged and stored back at base," said Gibbs.
ABOUT ZEBRA TECHNOLOGIES
Zebra (NASDAQ: ZBRA) provides the solutions to help businesses grow through increased asset visibility, connected frontline workers and intelligent automation. The company operates in more than 100 countries, and our customers include over 80% of the Fortune 500. Designed for the frontline, Zebra's award-winning portfolio includes hardware, software, and services, all backed by our 50+ years of innovation and global partner ecosystem. Follow Zebra on our blog and LinkedIn, visit our newsroom and learn more at www.zebra.com.
CONTACT: Anthony Ozimic, Zebra Technologies, anthony.ozimic@zebra.com +44 7392 861491
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