TCCA, the global member-led organisation for all stakeholders in the critical communications ecosystem, is pleased to announce that a new communications services provider and network operator has joined as a member – BT.

Globally, BT supports more than 1.2 million businesses and public sector organisations and over 32 million consumer customers. Defence, central government, emergency services, the NHS, critical power and water agencies, all depend on BT.  Every year BT handles over 39 million 999/112 emergency calls before passing on to the relevant service.  And every day BT protects its infrastructure, networks and customers against 6,500 cyber-attacks.

And, through its award-winning EE mobile network, the biggest and fastest in the UK, BT Group provides resilient mission critical broadband communications for Britain’s Emergency Services Network (ESN). By ensuring quality-of-service, plus priority and pre-emption over other network users, emergency services and first responders can depend on the network so they can stay focused on their life-saving work.

Together, BT and EE are constantly evolving networks. Simplifying legacy estate whilst rapidly building new strategic architectures and constantly innovating to ensure mission critical performance.

Richard Harrap, Managing Director, ESN, said: “We’re delighted to join the TCCA and share our extensive EE and BT expertise that’s been established over many years through delivering critical national infrastructure and mission critical services, like ESN.  As one of the world’s first organisations to integrate mission critical voice and broadband services over a commercial LTE network, we’ve learned lots that could benefit other nations as they embark upon similar journeys. And, through our membership we can also collaborate, learn from how others approach critical communications, and continue to drive standards forward for the benefit of the industry. ”

“The strategy of many governments to deliver mission critical broadband to their essential agencies is through partnering with existing telecom operators. TCCA are very pleased to welcome BT to our global membership given their involvement in the UK ESN and other services and solutions they provide into critical user organisations that are essential to the ecosystem,” said TCCA CEO Kevin Graham. “We look forward to the valuable information sharing they can contribute to peers and end users across our community.”

Within its Working Groups, interoperability and certification programmes, and via its world-leading Critical Communications World event, TCCA members and partners set the agenda for the global development of critical communications.