Critical Connect: ICCA 2025 finalist for “Best MCX product or solution of the year”

Maintaining seamless, secure and reliable cross-border communication is essential for public safety agencies in the European Union (EU). Critical Connect removes barriers by providing EU-based interoperability between land mobile radio (LMR) systems, broadband push-to-talk (PTT) and applications to eliminate barriers and unify communications.

For its contributions to communication across Europe, Critical Connect has been recognized by the International Critical Communications Awards (ICCA) as a finalist in the ‘Best MCX product or solution of the year' category.

ICCA celebrates excellence within the sector and the success of products, organisations and individuals that have pushed boundaries and capabilities within the field. Read on to learn more about the features of Critical Connect that support the development and adoption of standards-based mission-critical broadband communications, earning it this recognition.

Traditional interoperability solutions often require complex and numerous network interfaces, making setup and management cumbersome and slow. Critical Connect overcomes this limitation using a single, secure network connection. The user-friendly Critical Connect Patch Portal allows for quick, intuitive setup and management of connections between agencies and organisations, regardless of their underlying network technologies. It provides a single point of access to voice, data, and video communications from various sources by supporting LMR-LMR and LMR-broadband interoperability. This allows for a unified view of information within control rooms and encourages wider adoption by promoting a low barrier to entry.

Critical Connect extends interoperability beyond just voice communication. It enables sharing of critical data (e.g. group affiliation information, emergency alarms), location information, and multimedia (video, images, files) between users on different networks. This rich data exchange is crucial for improving situational awareness and coordinating effective emergency responses, fostering a more comprehensive and effective communications ecosystem.

Critical Connect is built for scalability. A single connection point allows organisations to gradually expand their interoperability capabilities as their needs evolve, supporting thousands of talkgroups and hundreds of simultaneous calls if needed. The ability to quickly establish and dismantle connections based on changing demands adds crucial flexibility that legacy systems often lack. This adaptability ensures Critical Connect remains relevant and valuable as the communication landscape changes and incidents become more complex.

Critical Connect is designed from the ground up to facilitate interoperability between disparate systems, utilising industry-standard protocols such as 3GPP-based interfaces to enable interoperability with TETRA Systems. Using Critical Connect, a single agency can connect with up to 50 different LMR systems using dedicated, feature-rich wireline gateways. The agency can interop with TETRA, P25, DMR and conventional systems. Likewise, agencies can add 200 RoIP gateways to interop with conventional LMR Systems.

Government and commercial organisations use the latest technology solutions to keep field personnel connected, informed, and safe. Protecting these services' confidentiality, integrity and availability is paramount. That is why we have adopted a holistic, risk-based approach to security for Critical Connect. Our approach is built with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework at its core. This approach focuses on mitigation options, continuous monitoring, diagnosis, and remediation to evolve security practices. We use the NIST 800-53 standard (Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, Recover, and Govern) as our baseline for application security, and applications must follow it for configuration, event logging, change management, and other functions.

To protect privacy and security, all Critical Connect communications are end-to-end secured and FIPS 140-3 Level-2 compliant, with encryption algorithms like AES-256 and multi-factor authentication utilised when connecting to WAVE PTX broadband PTT applications. Additionally, locally redundant and geo-redundant architecture helps ensure service continuity and reliability.

Several compelling use cases highlight the transformative potential of Critical Connect to improve communication between EU agencies.

1. Multi-agency emergency response

Large-scale events often require multi-agency coordination. Critical Connect allows public safety agencies to communicate and share data during emergencies, even if they’re using different devices or networks, with talk groups and connections that can be dynamically set up and torn down in just a few clicks. 

For example, if a departed flight declares mayday to air traffic control, the communications operator can use Critical Connect can be used to patch air traffic control, emergency services and airport security talkgroups, enabling coordinated response and rescue activities. The operator can also add airline staff and volunteer WAVE PTX profiles to Critical Connect, expanding talkgroups to include all stakeholders as needed. This may involve recruiting volunteer and auxiliary defense teams, depending on the scale of the incident, and engaging airport security and bomb squads to address potential threats like terrorist activity.

2. Cross-border coordination

International coordination is essential for situations such as natural disasters, cross-border chases, wild fires and the protection of public figures. Critical Connect enables communication and data-sharing to be quickly and easily established across borders, providing greater situational awareness and helping to streamline responses for the involved agencies. 

For example, if a natural disaster occurs that spans across borders, dispatchers can patch agencies in the affected area so responders can effectively work together through unified command while mitigating radio congestion and interagency barriers. Without this level of coordination, agencies risk delayed rescue efforts or missed opportunities to save lives.

Critical Connect actively promotes and facilitates the adoption of standards-based mission-critical broadband communications by offering a flexible, scalable and user-friendly solution that simplifies interoperability between diverse systems and encourages the sharing of critical voice and data information. Its design actively addresses the challenges inherent in legacy systems, fostering a more robust and collaborative emergency response environment.

Contact us to find out more about our solutions and services.