Australia's PSN needs more regulation to kickstart deployment

Progress on Australia’s Public Safety Mobile Broadband (PSMB) capability for first responders has fallen behind many countries and requires further funding and regulation to become a reality.

Despite being on the agenda for nearly a decade, the network — which would provide emergency service workers reliable and ubiquitous access to data — has seen “relatively minimal” progress and will need to rely on the big three mobile operator networks to succeed.

Speaking at the recent Australian Radio Communications Industry Association (ARCIA) conference in Sydney, NSW Telco Authority Chief Digital and Technology Officer James Pickens said commercial mobile networks almost always underpin PSMB efforts in many countries and that regulation has been used to kickstart deployment in countries already implementing or operating public safety networks.

“As a consequence of the current spectrum landscape in Australia, the PSMB solution going forward will need to share spectrum with mobile network operators… Regulation has facilitated the delivery of PSMB capability in many countries including laws mandating multicarrier roaming and the prioritisation of emergency service traffic over shared spectrum assets,” he said. “We need to prioritise the move to the next phase of PSMB delivery and seek clarity of support from all players in the space. Government and industry are going to be needed to make this a reality.

“With a national PSMB capability the situation would be vastly different,” he said. “We have the technology to provide this capability now. What we don’t have is a network that can provide it at the mission-critical grade that these emergencies require.”

He added: “A commitment to funding; a commitment to the engagement of industry in solution design and momentum from the creation of a suitable national body are needed to move this forward.”

Pickens praised the federal government’s recent commitment of $10.1 million to establishing a central taskforce to drive PSMB delivery. “The Commonwealth leading a body with appropriate staffing and resources, charged with the accountability to deliver, operate and manage a PSMB, is an incredibly welcome development and a critical step in advancing PSMB capabilities,” he said.

However, he warned that the relatively small number of first responders meant that a commercial solution to PSMB may not happen without further action by government and industry.

“What we really need is Australians coming together, whether they work in government or industry, to fulfil a moral obligation to provide a fit-for-purpose Public Safety Mobile Broadband capability for first responders who put their lives on the line to protect us,” he said. “Australian first responders are less than half a million people out of a population of 26 million. Whether it’s paramedics, firefighters, police or SES volunteers, all of us rely on them to be there on our hardest days… What we need is governments, regulators and commercial operators to approach the PSMB through a lens that encompasses not only the market perspective, but also the public good.”

Mandatory always-on roaming

Despite major reluctance from the three mobile network operators, Pickens said permanent roaming for emergency services is what is wanted by first responders. “Providing continuous PSMB roaming for most service organisations ensures that they’re less affected by a single operator outage and, at the same time, providing them with the greatest mobile coverage,” he said. The ACCC is currently investigating temporary roaming during natural disasters or other emergencies as part of its Regional Mobile Infrastructure inquiry.

“An aggregate of all three networks will provide the best [solution] and concerns around … network congestion should be alleviated by considering that we only require this functionality for a very small subset of people,” he said.

During the 2022 NSW floods he said there were more than 800 reported telecommunications impacts on networks and 18 communities were left with no access at all. “The absence of phone and mobile data services caused by network outages impeded the disaster response and prevented emergency services from accessing time-critical information and from sending emergency warnings and evacuation orders that also didn’t make their way through to ... communities,” he said. “This compromised the safety of first responders in the field. The situational awareness was predominantly limited to voice-only.”

Pickens added that regulation should address increasing network resilience, or hardening. Operators would need to deliver additional capabilities around QoS, prioritisation and pre-emption for mission-critical services — each are sensitive areas for mobile operators providing commercial services. While QoS measures network performance, priority ensures that critical communications receive preferential treatment over non-critical communications when the network is congested. Pre-emption means non-critical communications can be interrupted to allow critical comms to continue when necessary.

“During the Black Summer bushfires more than 200 mobile sites experienced outages for substantial periods of time, largely due to power and in mostly populated areas,” he said. “Operational command centres often had to rely on voice communications alone exacerbated by the fact that, for example, in the NSW–Victorian border, the two networks are very different and the two jurisdictions couldn’t actually communicate with each other.”

Pickens said some existing federal and state mobile investment programs could be leveraged but the gap may need to be filled through regulation. “It’s unlikely operators will invest in the network hardening to the degree required unless they have to,” he said.

“PSMB needs to be built for the increasingly frequent worst-case scenarios with the resilience to withstand severe disasters,” he said. “Emergency services most critically need access to broadband at these times when there are often network outages or congestion, which impact commercial networks.”

Pickens said that with a renewed emphasis on public safety, there may be an opportunity to examine telecom operator obligations under the Telecommunications Act with resilience as a lens to see a greater emphasis needs to be put on uptime. “It’s not the Telco Authority to say definitively what it should look like but it’s a question for the industry,” he said. “It’s vital for emergency services to have access to accurate real-time data on operational status networks during emergencies. This includes network outages, performance issues and the expected time to regain full service.

“We have the technology to deliver PSMB. We should have the confidence in our ability to work out in detail all necessary agreements, both into governmental and commercial.”

Telco Authority tech trials

NSW Telco Authority operates the highly reliable Public Safety Network in that state but it only offers voice and narrowband capability. There are interoperability issues between jurisdictions and the network can’t evolve to deliver broadband services. “Emergency service workers in every line of service and in every state and territory have communicated the urgent need for mission-critical data and particularly video capabilities to enable the use of best practice digital technologies,” Pickens said.

The Telco Authority achieved an Australian-first demonstration of commercial multicarrier roaming with dedicated PSMB core, as well as interoperable mission-critical communications, between jurisdictions, which Pickens said lays the groundwork for the development of a national PSMB.

However, in the absence of PSMB capability, the Authority has been trialling mobile and satellite technologies as part of the NSW Government’s $3.5 million Next Generation Digital Connectivity project. Pickens said the results of the trials will be made public very soon.

“We’ve got trials underway in NSW RFS, the Reconstruction Authority, the State Emergency Service, the ACT Emergency Service Agency, Service NSW, NSW National Parks and Wildlife, and the Ambulance Service,” he said. “We’re working with a variety of vendors including Wireless Innovations, Av-Comm, Vocus, Optus, FSG and have 10 or so more technology partners lined up for future experiment work.”

In one trial, NSW Telco Authority is using low Earth orbit satellites for firefighters in areas of low or no coverage, including the ability to remain connected while in transit, on fire trails and in dense bushland — all areas where traditional satellites struggle. In another trial, the Authority has created temporary large-area Wi-Fi coverage using a combination of drones and satellites.

“We’re also testing recovery connectivity, whether through portable devices or satellite systems that can be quickly deployed to restore communication networks after a disaster or during an emergency situation,” Pickens said.

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