Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) and EADS Defense and Security officials say they’re “joining forces to develop new public safety technologies by combining the standards in both the land mobile radio and commercial wireless realms into a single joint product.”

Industry observer Kevin Fitchard (News - Alert) reports that the two companies signed “an agreement of principle” to develop an emergency communications platform “based on long-term evolution and the Project 25 standards, designed to fuel interoperability between disparate local, state and federal agencies.”

Alcatel Lucent officials say they will provide the LTE (News - Alert) radio access infrastructure, data packet core, service delivery architecture and backhaul elements, Fitchard says, “all based on the 3GPP standards but optimized for the frequencies used by public safety agencies.”

This relates to news earlier this year from 3gpp.org that LTE, the fourth-generation mobile wireless technology favored by public safety for a proposed 700 MHz broadband network, was trialed and will be deployed in earnest by the end of this year, citing officials from Verizon (News - Alert) Wireless and Alcatel-Lucent at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials Winter Summit.

“Verizon’s existing third-generation CDMA EV-DO data networks provide customers with data rates between 0.6 Mb/s and 1.4 Mb/s, but LTE networks are expected to provide users with almost 10 times the data throughputs, between 5 Mb/s and 12 Mb/s downlink, said Diane Wesche, director of product development-government for Verizon Wireless,” according to the site.

Fitchard reports that EADS (News - Alert) will integrate its existing LMR technology with the 4G platform, “creating what amounts to an emergency radio network with an all-IP mobile broadband overlay.” He notes that EADS will also supply the radio/LTE terminals and optimize its public safety applications for the LTE network: “The two plan to target the platform first at 700 MHz, the band occupied by both digital LMR systems and the first U.S. LTE networks.”