We’ll have more to say about APCO 2017 in subsequent posts to The Dispatch blog, however one of the technical showcases was the Catalyst demonstration of LTE (cellular mobile phone) to LMR (public safety Land Mobile Radio) communications.

In our booth, we had a portable mobile radio and were able to communicate with a Verizon Push to Talk cell phone – right in the booth!

This demonstration was important for FirstNet, because both the cellular network (cell phone to Verizon cellular network) and the Wide Area Network connecting the cellular network to Catalyst Gateways (that were then connected to mobile radios) can some day all be on the FirstNet Network. In that application, FirstNet serves as a backhaul network and can be used to extend LMR coverage to locations that don’t have good radio coverage but do have good cellular coverage.