I recently attended TCCA’s annual Critical Communications World (CCW), which this year took place in Helsinki, Finland, very close to our global headquarters in Espoo. As you know, CCW is one of the most important annual events in the critical communication and public safety communication community, so we at Nokia were delighted to participate in this important gathering in our home country. 

This gathering also was special for us because we had just refreshed our brand a few months earlier at MWC in February, affirming our position as a B2B technology innovation leader dedicated to realizing the potential of digital in every industry, including critical industries and public safety. 

Given all of this and our intense focus on the evolution of critical communications toward broadband and standards-based technologies, it was especially important for us and our customers to have a strong presence at CCW 2023. This started at the Helsinki airport, where we were welcoming CCW visitors coming from around the world with ads highlighting our new brand. It continued at the conference with eight speakers from Nokia, who shared their knowledge and expertise on many different but important topics concerning mission-critical broadband communications.

• Thomas Rehberg, our head of public safety and airport market segments spoke about best practices in operating critical networks.

• Chris Johnson, our senior vice president and global head of enterprise, led a “fireside chat” session, where he spoke about the progress made in the transformation of critical communications and their evolution toward 3GPP based technologies.

• Hannu Kauppinen, CTO at Nokia Technologies, delivered a keynote on the urgent need for innovation in critical communications for the public safety community to address the upcoming challenges that will come with climate changes, socio-economic evolution the rise in cybercrimes. 

Our subject matter experts also spoke about the new role of the network in cybersecurity, how non-terrestrial networks will complement terrestrial ones to provide ubiquitous broadband coverage in any situation, and spectrum options for deploying mission-critical broadband networks or even 6G.

Innovation in action at the Nokia booth

Our booth at CCW 2023 presented several innovative new products. There we launched our new Core Enterprise solution – a compact 4G and 5G core network solution optimized for the needs of public safety or power utilities organization that need to cover large areas but don’t have the same number of subscribers as telcos.

Additionally, we showcased our support for an initiative from TCCA’s Broadband Industry Group (BIG), of which Nokia is an active member, though our demonstration of the world’s first live Band 68 LTE – a dedicated frequency that can be used to support public safety critical communications. Many countries are interested in using this band for their broadband communications, and we were happy to demonstrate our industry commitment to assuring it benefits the public safety community.

We also exhibited our Nokia Drone Networks solution, which was launched a few weeks before CCW. This innovative service leverages the capability of our mobile broadband networks to improve the situational awareness of teams in the field, even before first responders arrive on site. Winner of an International Critical Communications Award (ICCA) this year during CCW, this solution is going to be deployed across Belgium by our customer, Citymesh, to support public safety agencies – initially utilizing 70 drones to provide enhanced 360 sensory video public safety services.

Looking to the future, we also displayed our Real-Time eXtended Reality Multimedia (RXRM) solution, a concrete first step toward the industrial metaverse that combines 360 video and spatial audio to provide responders with a real-life experience of the situation.

Critical communications leadership

These demonstrations and others at our booth were a concrete example of Nokia’s technology leadership to deliver the next evolution in critical networking, enabling the creation of new digital services and applications that will elevate first responders’ awareness and response. Our central involvement in the 3GPP standard will help drive an ecosystem where other players contribute to that environment, and we remain laser-focused on helping our customers migrate successfully from the traditional voice-only environment to that rich environment of the future.

As Thomas Rehberg noted at the show, moving to new technology, building the advanced critical communications ecosystem with a range of technology partners and the public safety agencies we serve requires trust. We build that by listening and responding to the public safety professionals we serve.

Apparently our commitment is resonating very well with customer interest, as our booth was crowded during the three days of the event – and that’s certainly our biggest satisfaction from this Helsinki Edition of CCW. By all measures this event was a great success, with exciting new technology and rewarding engagement with our customers and partners! I look forward to seeing everyone at next year’s event in Dubai.