Alcatel-Lucent has announced that the company successfully demonstrated full interoperability of its solution for using 4G LTE wireless technology in public safety applications in the United States. Testing of an end-to-end Alcatel-Lucent Public Safety LTE ‘Band 14’ solution successfully met key criteria, ensuring the provision of continuous network coverage for first responders in the field.

The testing of Alcatel-Lucent’s public safety LTE solution, carried out with technology from other vendors, has taken place alongside a performance evaluation as part of the ‘Phase 3, Part 1’ of the United States Department of Commerce’s Public Safety Communications Research Program. This program has been part of the LTE Demonstration Network Test Plan conducted at the Commerce Boulder, Colorado Laboratories, in preparation for the future deployment of the FirstNet nationwide broadband public safety network.

According to the company, the solution was successfully demonstrated via a series of tests on a network combining Alcatel-Lucent’s evolved packet core (EPC) technology with radio access networks (RAN) from several vendors, and Alcatel-Lucent’s RAN with EPCs from various vendors. The performance testing evaluated whether LTE devices remained connected to a network as well as network throughput.