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In last week’s Advocate, I wrote about how far we have come in meeting our goal of interoperability and outlined some of the major items we still need to address. This week we will take a deeper dive into where we are today and what remains to be done.

First, let’s look at where we are today and what needs to be done this year. Yes, these things can be completed by the end of the year if public safety, FirstNet (Built with AT&T), the FirstNet Authority, and the vendor community can come to a consensus. As I have said before, this is not rocket science. A large number of agencies already use one of the FirstNet-approved Push-To-Talk (PTT) applications over the FirstNet network, over their LMR (Land Mobile Radio) systems, and to and from other agencies. If the vendor community won’t step up and take part in providing nationwide PTT interoperability, today’s FirstNet-approved PTT vendors that interoperate with each other will be able to go it alone and deliver the solution.