14 April 2021

Satellite has attracted many favourable column inches of late. From Starlink, SpaceX’s much-hyped satellite internet service to China’s mission to dominate space internet, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the technology is going through a renaissance. Indeed, the opportunities afforded by this method of communication is moving at speed in military and defence applications and broadband IP services, to name a few. However, the challenge has been that these advancements have coincided with performance gains enjoyed by other telecommunications systems.

So, with satellite having long been viewed as a technology belonging to a different era, is it  going to be playing catch up for a long time?

14 April 2021

Mladen Vratonjic, chair, The Critical Communications Association (TCCA)

How would you define critical communications? There are many instances where needing to communicate is important. But truly mission critical communications can mean the difference between life or death. 

This is the first in a series of articles where we will take a look at the critical communications landscape around the world, how it is evolving to meet the changing needs of the end-users, and the huge amount of work that goes on behind the scenes – largely carried out by volunteers – to ensure that critical communications networks are robust, reliable, resilient and secure. It is those networks that support, amongst others, our first responders - the police, medical and fire and rescue services that we rely on to help us in a crisis and keep us safe.