The following post is a PRESS RELEASE issued at APCO 2023 on August 7.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T)
awarded Catalyst Communications Technologies a contract to develop interoperability amongst
various Mission Critical Push to Talk applications and other push to talk applications supported
by FirstNet® built with AT&T, Southern Linc’s CriticalLink™ and other service providers using
Push to Talk systems. With the proliferation of different push to talk over Broadband systems,
there is now a need for a solution to enable users on these different LTE based systems to
communicate with each other.
Catalyst Communications Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of Radio Control over IP
solutions to the Push-to-Talk marketplace, was earlier awarded a Phase I contract to research
the feasibility of a Broadband Push-to-Talk Interoperability Platform. Based upon their research
and conclusion that the technology they proposed to enable broadband interoperability could
be developed, Catalyst was awarded this Phase II contract to develop a prototype. The company
had previously been awarded contracts from DHS S&T in 2018 and 2020 to research and
develop a platform for communications between land mobile radio (LMR) subscriber devices
and smartphones on LTE networks using a standards compliant Mission Critical Push to Talk
(MCPTT) Application. The development of a broadband interoperability platform is expected to
be developed in 2023 and 2024.
Company president Robin Grier stated, “We are pleased to once again be working with the
Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate to develop technology
in support of First Responder communications and the needs of the mission critical
communications marketplace
This award is a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II Award. The objective of
Phase II is to continue efforts to develop and demonstrate a working prototype that builds upon
the Phase I research award. Phase III of this effort undertakes activities to commercialize the
Phase II results to the marketplace.
