Page 16 - 3GPP Highlights

PARTNER FOCUS

CERTIFICATION OF

MISSION CRITICAL

PRODUCTS

By Chris Hogg (Global Certification Forum)

and Harald Ludwig (TCCA)

During December 2019, in recognition of Figure 1
the need to accelerate the availability of Dropped call rates
certification solutions for the LTE mission 20%
Dropped call rate for 1 billion calls made on a
critical (MC) industry, GCF and TCCA European mobile network in 5 different months
established a joint task force to set up a
programme fit for future growth in the field. 15%
With applications, infrastructure, and
devices provided by many different vendors 10%
- standards are essential to ensuring
interoperability. However, ensuring that
services will work becomes even more 5%
vital in the context of mission critical Non GCF
services; where lives literally depend on it.
In such circumstances, it is not enough to 0% Mean
implement the standards – there must also GCF
be a method to assess compliance to them. Members
-5%
By establishing certification for mission Calls made with non-GCF member
critical products, the industry intends to devices display, on average, a 20% higher
follow the success of the GCF programme -10% dropped call rate compared to
in the mobile sector (see figure 1) to get GCF-member devices
certified equipment in to the hands of Month A B C D E
emergency workers.

KEY OUTCOMES The Phase 1 certification scope covers A NEW PERMANENT
Mission Critical Push to Talk (MCPTT)
OF THE FIRST features, used in existing or near-term GROUP FOR
deployments, in a GSMA functional ‘field
PHASE OF WORK trial’ test environment. Certification will be PHASE 2
conducted under GCF rules, for LTE devices
with (pre)-integrated mission critical push
to talk clients. Both the LTE stack and the
The joint taskforce, working from January group communications functionality of the GCF has now set up a permanent body –
to June 2020, consisted of 85 members, MCPTT client will be assessed during GCF the ‘Mission Critical Agreement Group
representing 39 organisations from all certification. (MCAG)’ to build on Phase 1 certification
major stakeholders involved in mission and to plan the next phase, which may
critical deployments (government Features that will be addressed in later cover certification of Mission Critical
authorities, operators, manufacturers phases include use of eMBMS bearers, servers, standalone client certification and
and test industry). Together they have off-network calls (PROSE), MCVideo and the integration of conformance testing
defined an initial (Phase 1) certification MCData features. Certification is planned once suitable commercial test equipment
scope and a plan for certification to begin, to begin with products that are based on becomes available.
in anticipation of the availability of LTE 3GPP Release 15 and higher.
conformance test equipment for MC The first meeting of MCAG will take place
services. later this year and participation is open to
all GCF and TCCA members.
Further information:

chris.hogg@globalcertificationforum.org harald.ludwig@tcca.info
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16 3GPP Highlights newsletter