Sprint, Motorola team on Nextel first responder interoperability

The two companies announced a solution Wednesday that lets safety personnel talk to each other through its public safety radios and Nextel phones.

Both are framing it in the context of September 11th, which showed how vulnerable the nation's emergency communications infrastructure was. By allowing those with Nextel walkie-talkie cellular phones to talk directly to those with public safety radios, an important hurdle is cleared.

The link is established via a gateway called the Motobridge. The device will act as the connection point to the various types of networks. Advanced features enabled on Nextel phones would even work through the gateway.

Among those supported are group calls, call alert status messages, talk group calls and emergency alerts, according to a statement by the companies.

"The collaboration between Motorola and Sprint is a critical step to further boosting communications capabilities for public safety personnel," former FEMA director James Lee Witt said. "It is essential to enable interoperability and simplify communications when operating on different frequencies."

Sprint Nextel has been the target of some criticism from the FCC over interference to public safety communications it apparently creates in some regions. The agency called on the carrier last August to clear out of certain frequencies as was stipulated by the agency in its 2004 approval of the merger of the two companies.

Wednesday's agreement seems to have nothing to do with those arrangements, although it does solve the problem among many public safety officials who had to juggle multiple devices in order to facilitate communication.