During the APCO Conference and Expo in New Orleans earlier this month, Motorola Solutions announced an updated version of its mobile LTE broadband modem which will allow public safety personnel to seamlessly “fall back” onto 3G networks when/where Band 14 LTE is unavailable.
The company believes the latest iteration of this product is optimized for public safety “users looking for an enhanced broadband modem to meet current and future needs,” and this “fall back” capability is foundation for a sound argument in that regard.
The VML 750 LTE Vehicle Modem will not only solve the broadband connectivity problems present today, but as will also connect with the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network being built and deployed by FirstNet.
Present and Future Solutions
The VML 750 LTE Vehicle Modem — which is ruggedized for to withstand heat, cold, rain, humidity, dust, and vibration — enables automatic fallback from 4G to 3G on public carrier Band 13 LTE along with Band 14 private LTE roaming, “ensuring optimal coverage and performance at all times,” according to the press release issued at APCO. The modem can also act as a Wi-Fi hotspot for up to 32 clients, turning the vehicle into a wireless hub.
“Unlike its predecessor, the new VML750 LTE Vehicle Modem supports Public Safety LTE (Band 14) as well as Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network with the added ability to automatically fallback to 3G when 4G LTE is not available,” Daniel Sanchez — Global Product Marketing Consultant for Motorola Solutions — told Police1.
“Additionally, the product has been enhanced with a higher ruggedness rating that protects it from water intrusion (IP66) and greater number of WiFi hotspot clients, growing from 8 to 32. Planned future upgrades include Dual SIM operation, MVPN security software, and certification on the AT&T 3G/4G LTE network,” Sanchez added.
“Now public safety, government service and utilities have an even more powerful and versatile in-vehicle, broadband tool to enable high-speed data with the priority, control, security and performance required to do their mission-critical jobs more efficiently and effectively,” according to the company press release.
Applications enabled by the VML750 include video streaming, mobile computer-aided dispatch (CAD), automatic vehicle location (AVL), resource mapping, mobile Wi-Fi access, incident command, license plate recognition, vehicle diagnostics and device management. Other key data applications include photos, blueprints, biometrics, GPS location, reports, email, and record searches.
The range and performance of the VML750 can be extended with roof-mounted external antennas with Multiple-In Multiple-Out (MIMO) configuration.
Although pricing information was not made available, a company spokesperson said it would be “comparable with pricing for the VML 700.”
