All right, let's go out and get started. Hello, everyone. My name is Joe and thanks for joining us for the T-Mobile for Government Snapshot series, where industry experts share high level updates about new powerful technologies that are transforming communications. Now this morning, we're meeting with Scott Wiley, Senior Product Manager for Government Solutions at T-Mobile. And our topic is push to talk mobile technology and how T-Mobile is helping first responders, government agencies and businesses across many vertical markets communicate faster and more reliably over the country's largest 5G network. So Scott, let's go ahead and just jump right in. All right, point to talk technology, it's been around for decades. What exactly is mission critical? Push to talk? Yeah, you're correct. Push to talk has been around for for over 100 years and but mission critical push to talk is relatively new and it is 5G broadband T priority enabled it this is our enabled push to talk solution. So this is 3 GPP standards based MCPTT. So we've, we've built for all of the standard first responder use cases, but really works just like like a standard radio. You can do group calling, 1 to one calling. We're really trying to bring that land mobile radio experience to our cellular devices and and run that over a nationwide 5G network. Perfect. So I got 3 quick questions for you now. Who uses it, Scott? I mean who can use it? So MCPDT is targeted for first responders, but it's really anyone in that ecosystem that may have to communicate with first responders. We talk about extended users, state, local, federal governments, utilities, any, any use case where someone today might be using a land mobile radio, they are a candidate to use mission critical PTT if they want to move that any, some or all that traffic away from a their standard land mobile radio, but bring that over to a nationwide network. OK. So these people that we've just described, what challenges are they facing? Well, so when when we look at the land mobile radio networks that are out there, those are typically owned and operated by all these individual entities and those typically need to be upgraded every 10 years. So that can be very constraining to budgets when you're having to overhaul the core, all the repeaters that are set up around a city as well as replacing with the next generation of land mobile radios, which can sometimes they can, you know, start at around 1000. But some of the, the most expensive LMR radios can cost up to $8000. So we are a great solution to to lower that those costs away from the agency to, to cellular services. Some other, other challenges facing first responders and, and this community is natural disasters and fires, anything that could cause an LMR network to go down. While cellular towers and, and LMR towers are, are typically hardened, you know, you can only harden so, so much. So if you've got other ways to get your communication out on alternate networks, we always talk about having a backup, a backup plan. So being able to run that critical communication over the cellular network with MCPTT, it really helps for that use case. And and lastly, network congestion, whether you're, you know, at a, a stadium or you, there's been some kind of an event in a, in a downtown area and everyone's using their phone, we want to make sure that, that our, our push to talk services can, can still happen. And and, and so we work to prioritize that so, so that that congestion doesn't stop the those lanes of communication. Yeah. Thank you for laying out all those challenges. Appreciate it. So why are we here? OK. What is T-Mobile doing to help? So you know, this is a part of our our T priority launch and we are creating the lanes in our network to run first responder traffic and and mission critical PTT is one of those solutions that will run on this T priority offering. So we're targeting to empower public safety with communications that is prioritized. It will preempt other traffic and will perform in times of extreme network congestion. We can take this MCPTT service and we can tie it in with any existing Lam mobile radio network. And so that can be as basic as one channel or many channels like the whole system and bridging those with other agencies. So we're also bringing a new new feature, new functionality to push the talk to allow text messaging, video location sharing, So going beyond what a traditional land mover radio does. Yeah, that, that's fantastic. Well, I got to ask you here, you know it, it does obviously it's very useful and help first responders and critical infrastructure organizations a lot. But Scott, can you give us some specific examples how it's making a difference? Yeah, I I just think of the, the different use cases that that are out there. You know, we, we know the Lammo radio is going to stick around on the patrol, patrol officers belt for a while, but there are other officers and other leaders within organizations that don't want to lose that calm channel. And I think of undercover officers, they can put MCPTT on an iPhone and, and listen discreetly through an Airpod and, and no one knows that they're a part of, of communications and can get in touch with their, their whole organization that's on their land. Mobile radios, redundancy. It is so important, you know, an LMR network's not perfect, a cellular network's not perfect, but to have a backup plan and redundant communication that still has the ability to get to the same people. So you're not just trying to, you know, use a cell phone as a backup to make phone calls. You could still get your groups and your channels that you would with a, with an LMR radio. There's a lot of cost savings. I mentioned that earlier that you know, price of a radios can get up in the six $7000 range running those services for the less critical people within an organization, there's a lot of savings and, and really expansion. Sometimes, you know, for an event or you know, or or you want to extend your communications to partners, like maybe to a school district or utilities or any kind of like restore all efforts, you can quickly add others into the system without diminishing the capacity on your current LMR system. So yeah. Excellent, excellent. OK, so the what of MCPTT is clear. So now I got to ask how does it all work? So we we have a redundant and a secure encrypted platform that process all the PTT calls that is integrated into our network so that PTT calls go through here the text messaging we now have video streaming location data. I mentioned N 10 encrypted, but that then rides on on the T-Mobile 5G network and with T priority, we're granting priority access to the network and and preemption if that's ever needed. So that's really how we able to bring these push to talk, this land mobile radio experience onto the cellular network. And even, you know, gone so far as to make sure that we have emergency calling that that emergency button that you'd hit on a, a radio. We've got that same feature functionality within mission critical push to talk. And you know, I want to just go a little bit more into what we're doing with T priority. T priority is always on. It's 24/7. There's not a need to elevate someone. So it's the same with our mission critical push to talk service. Your device is is sending that data the same way and getting that 24/7 priority preemption T priority benefits all the time. Yeah, fascinating. Yeah, it is, really is. But I'm sure the devices first responders and critical infrastructure organizations use are a big part of the equation. So, Scott, can you tell us a little bit more about the equipment? Absolutely. And the equipment is important and we work with the some of the best vendors in the industry to make sure that we have the different devices available, whether it's a, a cellular device that is meant specifically to replace a land mobile radio. So you've just got APTT button and a speaker. So it looks and walks like a land mobile radio, but flip phones. So you've got, you know, PTT and phone calls as well as rugged PTT smartphones. What, what's great about those is we we work, they have high cloud volume, separate PTT key and there's a whole ecosystem of accessories, whether it's the, the palm, the palm mic, the remote speaker microphone or covert earpieces or even car kits to, you know, take that portable and turn it into a mobile for that mobile vehicle experience. Mobile radio experience is in there, but it, it doesn't stop at just those rugged PTT devices we run on all your latest and greatest iPhones, Samsung's and Pixels as well as Android and iOS tablets. We're, we're, we've seen the adoption on iPhones and we're going further and, and our our MCPTT service is now going to work with what Apple has done to make PTT be a better experience on iPhones with, with the IOSPTT framework. So it's really a quick thing on that is it brings PTT to the foreground of the phone. So you don't have to unlock your phone or if you're doing other stuff, you can still respond to PTT calls. So leaps and bounds are are being made to bring that experience that that LMR experience even to the iPhones. Yeah, and I know most people that are listening are familiar with are already using an LMR system here, but what is T-mobile's MCPTT differ? Yeah. So, so where where this differs is, is we run on a broadband network so we can bring a lot more use cases to life with MCPTTI alluded earlier to the ability to do video streaming. So I think of, you know, fire command, you can share a video to all the people on, on the channel of and, and, and allocate resources based on what they see or in an ambulance, you know, if you need to do a live video stream back to the emergency room so they know what's what's coming, You know, you can do that with the video streaming. There's location tracking. You can do calls that dynamic dynamic calling based on where people are located and, and even just sending text messages files, maybe a picture of a of a missing, missing kid and exchanged documents. So all that is able to run through our our our key priority network and the mission critical push to talk service. So that's where you go above and beyond what a glam mobile radio can do. And so when we talk about MCPTT, we, we, we want to bring that land mobile radio experience to the user on a phone, whether they have one of our rugged PTT devices or whether they're just using a regular smartphone. And so that, that experience we've, we've taken it and we set up channels. So our our talk groups are, are, are set up just like a channel would be on a LAMO radio. You can toggle between those. You can leverage scanning so that you're scanning all your channels. Maybe you prioritize a few or maybe your, your duty today is and the only reason and the only channel you need to be on, you're locked on that and you're going to hear that communications. So, and lastly what I mentioned is, is emergency calling it. We've got it built in. So whether you're using the app or rugged PTT device, you can hit a button press and hold and get the let people know that there's a there's an emergency and get that assistance that's needed. OK, first responders in the field, they're incredibly important, but the people on the administrative side, they need help managing everything too really quickly. Can you tell us, Scott, how MCPTT helps them do their jobs better? Yeah, when when you look at the land mobile radio industry, there's it's it's getting better for management. But what we're coming in with the mission critical push talk service. One person in the agency, an administrator that administers the radio system can go to a an online tool and they can see all of the subscribers and manage the service, turn features on and off, set up all the talk groups, the channels, the contacts, give certain like supervisors access to people's location, but not not expose that to everyone else. That can all be done by one person instantly. There's no collecting radios, no cabling them up, no writing code plugs. So that saves so much time and and also allows an agency to pivot if they need to change and set up new talk groups in a system. And going beyond that, we understand that, you know, you need, you've got your dispatchers and, and they, you know, need, still need to, they need to be able to make these push to talk calls. So there is a desktop dispatch product. So it runs on a computer, runs on Windows. You've got a large map, you can see where people are located, monitor up to 20 talk groups at one time, participate and and have that dispatcher experience that a dispatchers are used to with their land mobile radio networks. Yeah, now there are a lot of PPT solutions out there. So how does T-Mobile MCPTT meet their needs? Yeah. So I I look at this on the ability to scale. So MCPTT can scale for a small agency or the largest agencies in this country. Our system can hold up to 300,000 in what we call MCX talkers. And what happens there is a user affiliates to a channel. So the dispatcher knows who's online, who's going to receive the audio. Yeah, we, we aren't hitting 300,000 people at one time. Our, our group Max is 3000. But for most day-to-day communications you're not talking to that many people. But being able to hit 3000 is pretty incredible to press that button and get 3000 devices across the nation at one time. What we've also done with the talk group and user profiles is an agency can share their talk groups, their, their members and combine those with another agencies. So it, it helps in mutual aid scenarios to be able to share those. I, I, I mentioned that affiliation, I'm going to talk about it again. You, you don't know if a radio is on or off in the field and a lot of other PTT solution, you wouldn't know who's going to be listening. The dispatcher can go in and see who's affiliated and, and, and you affiliate to a channel. So you're going to get that, that call if you're affiliated. And, and you know, lastly, if, if a device goes missing, I know we all lose our phones. It's probably a little easier to lose a phone than a large radio, but the administrator can go in and shut that off. Or if, if someone's, you know, not responding and, and you know, they're online, there's even the ability to turn on listening to see what's going on and see if resources need, if there's an emergency and, and backup needs to be sent in. So those are kind of some, I think some defining features of the service. Yeah, for the groups that aren't ready to get rid of their legacy equipment and systems, how does T-mobile's MCPTT work with those? Yeah. And with this space, we're not expecting people to to replace their land mobile radio. We want to work with the agency, understand their needs. MCPTT is meant to be complementary to augment your Lammoba radio system, whether it's it's a start of hey, let's let's bridge 1 channel and we can do that with a radio over IP box or we can bridge all the channels in a system and, and makes that connect to some of those larger P25 systems that require an ISSI or CSSI connection. So that can all be done as well as critical connect, but really it's, it's kind of a dialogue of how can mission critical PTT coexist and help alleviate some of an agency's problems, perhaps with, you know, reaching the Max number of users that they have on their system today. How do we, how do we grow the users? So, and, and, you know, moving or expanding on that, there's a, there's a lot, a lot of reasons to use Lam mobile radio interoperability 1. You extend that range. You're not constrained to the repeaters that, that are on your network. You take advantage of a a nationwide 5G network can run on Wi-Fi. So that use case alone is a number one reason to even look into using MCPTT is just to expand that footprint fill in those those holes without having to build a tower to do that. You know, expanding the device types, being able to quickly spin up a mission critical push to talk client that can talk to your land mobile radio on on any phone, optimize those costs. You know that T-mobile's responsible for growing the network, growing the coverage. An agency doesn't have to worry about that. And really, I think there's a lot of opportunity to simplify management with these new MCPTT users as they become a part of the groups. Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge and experience with us today, Scott, and thank you out there for joining us. If you'd like to learn more, just look at the area at the bottom of your control panel with the heading related content. You're going to find links to learn more about T-mobile's MCPTT and T priority. You can also use that contact us link on your screen to connect with the T-Mobile representative. Well, we hope to see you for our next T-Mobile webinar snapshot series. But for now, so long, everyone. _1742880671745