Strategic Partnerships and Expanding Set of Mission-Critical Communications Capabilities Power North American Mobile Situational Awareness Market

With top tier wireless carriers making situational awareness a key component of their hugely strategic public safety initiatives and with first responder communications and guidance becoming more critical in tumultuous times, Mobile Situational Awareness (MSA) solutions are of keen interest in the North American market.

This study defines MSA as solutions that provide near real-time information and guidance regarding critical field situations to central command and to emergency first responder teams via their mobile devices. MSA solutions forge a tighter communications link between command personnel and users at the edge and can include mapping of the area and its surroundings, location and status of personnel and other markers, emergency calls and alerts, relevant photos and videos, collaborative team work spaces, event playback, PTT (push-to-talk) integration, and interoperability with the traditional—but severely limited—land mobile radio (LMR). The typical mobile device form factor is the smartphone (regular and ruggedized).

The mobile situational awareness market is still in an early stage, with three major types of providers competing for revenue and share.
Both MSA users and providers will want to monitor products, vendors, technology roadmaps, market trends, partnership opportunities, and evolving customer needs. They will also want to track challenges to growth in today's mobile situational awareness market, including: 1) Continued customer concerns regarding security, reliability and control, 2) The somewhat slow approach to product development on the part of the wireless carriers, 3) The sometimes lengthy sales cycle, and 4) A heavy dependence on the direct sales channel.

Companies interviewed for this study include AT&T, Intrepid Networks, and Verizon.