NIST Awards First Responder Broadband Tech R&D Grant to Sonim Technologies

Sonim Technologies has received a $1.4 million grant from the public safety communications research division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology to research, develop, produce and test broadband technologies for emergency communications.

Sonim said Monday it will collaborate with Nemergent Solutions to create an open source push-to-talk system that can operate with current narrowband equipment.

“Our goal is to accelerate adoption of mission critical voice services on [public safety broadband network] without the need for proprietary software and hardware,” said Robert Escalle, vice president of Sonim Technologies’ public safety market segment.

Officers from the Atlantic City Police Department and first responders from Fairfax County, Virginia, will test an integrated system that merges Nemergent’s LTE-based mission-critical PTT technology and Sonim’s XP Android handset.

The project supports the federal government’s FirstNet broadband communications network for first responders.