Commerce to test 4G technology for public safety network

The Commerce Department plans to establish a lab for real-world testing of emerging 4G communications technology that could be used in a national public safety network.

The facility will be set up by the Public Safety Communications Research program, a partnership of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The lab will house vendor equipment being developed for the emerging Long Term Evolution standard.

"It's brand new," Dereck Orr, NIST's PSCR program manager said of LTE. "It's bleeding edge. This will be a neutral site for vendors to work out interoperability issues in a multivendor environment and a learning environment for public safety officials."