Mr Viral
WEBWIRE – Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Vodafone launches Mission Critical (MCx) to provide essential voice, data and video connectivity to first responders, public safety services, and transportation sectors.First deployment of new global industry standard in Germany.Secure, reliable and enhanced coordination in a crisis through secure reach communications in real-time.Featured on Vodafones stand at Mobile World Congress (MWC25).
Vodafone is introducing Europes most modern, mission-critical mobile communications service that prioritises the emergency services, and other first responders.
Built for the digital era, it runs over existing 4G and 5G mobile networks, giving police, fire, rescue and medical experts fast, reliable and high responsive communications channels. Its nationwide reach is ideal for any organisation managing the safety of large crowds at public places like airports and festivals.
And Vodafones comprehensive underlying infrastructure of mobile base stations and small cells sites provide precision support in complex and isolated incidents in towns and cities, and in remote locations. Soon, it will work with direct to device mobile broadband satellite services, providing ubiquitous coverage on land and at sea.
Priority traffic
The key to MCx is the ability to automatically prioritise all forms of mobile multimedia traffic, including voice, data and video, used by the emergency services during an incident across the country or within a town and city. Mission critical communications is securely end-to-end encrypted and given priority over all other network usage in much the same way vehicles make room for an ambulance on a motorway.
Vodafone MCx will launch initially in Germany the first service of its kind in the country and the largest in Europe. It forms a major part of Vodafones strategy to provide Europe with a highly resilient digital infrastructure by integrating land-based mobile and fixed broadband networks, subsea cable links and new direct-to-device mobile broadband satellite services.
An essential overlay on existing mobile networks, MCx can be used with compatible smartphones and devices. It replaces the need for proprietary push-to-talk voice-only radios commonly associated with legacy systems such as TETRA, or Terrestrial Trunked Radio, and hybrid models.
Smartphone compatible
Built using the latest global 3GPP industry standards, MCx also promotes greater interoperability and better coordination between responders. They can share data, photos and videos, which could include aerial footage from rescue drones, as well as information gathered from peoples smartphones, all in real-time.
Marika Auramo, CEO of Vodafone Business, said: Police, firefighters and rescue workers can use our new service to communicate reliably and quickly at any time, and now for the first time, share prioritised data such as photos or videos taken at the scene in real-time. It will lead to clearer and more accurate information being made available to emergency services.
Vodafone is keen to stress that TETRA still has an important role in supporting emergency services. Careful migration from TETRA to MCx is needed to avoid any service disruption for responders and their critical command centres. To this end, Vodafone is working closely with all emergency services and the companies offering existing tailored applications and IT systems.
Supporting emergency services
Vodafone is helping emergency services across Europe, including around 80% of emergency organisations in the UK, to gain easy access to transformational digital technologies and accelerate their digital adoption, at a time when budgets and resources are under a lot of pressure. Vodafone plans to make MCx more widely available across Europe following the initial roll-out in Germany, as a key digital tool to help keep people safe.
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