It offers a standard methodology to ensure different vendors’ systems work together to deliver reliable access to emergency and life-saving services across Europe and beyond
ETSI has published ETSI TS 103 480, a new Technical Specification that establishes a framework for interoperability testing across next-gen emergency communications networks. It provides a standardised methodology to ensure that systems from different vendors can interoperate seamlessly, delivering reliable access to emergency and life-saving services across Europe and beyond.
The specification describes interoperability tests enabling network-independent access to emergency services, including:
- Verifying end-to-end interoperability between originating services
- Procedures for location and transport
- Test routing and policy functions
- A basis for standardised lab testing
It also assures essential functionalities such as location delivery, advanced mobile location (AML) and multimedia communication.
To encourage industry adoption, ETSI invites stakeholders to participate in its upcoming Plugtests, a collaborative environment for testing implementations in real-world scenarios.
“Interoperability is fundamental to the effectiveness of emergency communications,” said Cristina Lumbreras Chair of the ETSI Emergency Communications technical committee”. With this new specification, ETSI provides the industry with a practical and harmonised approach that ensures citizens can reliably access emergency services regardless of the network, device or the medium (for example, voice, video and text) they use.”
ETSI’s its specifications have supported the development of:
- AML for accurate caller location information to be transmitted to emergency services
- eCall which became mandatory in all new cars from March 2018, automatically alerting emergency services in the event of a serious accident.
- Next Generation 112 covers multimedia emergency communications in a standardised way including voice, NG eCall, real-time text and video communications
- Public warning systems – SMS warnings and instructions to citizens during emergencies.
