Softil Joins TCCA To Continue Advancing Interoperability of Mission Critical Communications Solutions

Softil announces that it is joining The Critical Communications Association TCCA to assist in the development of open interoperable standards for next generation products in mission critical or business critical environments.

The announcement heralds Softil bringing its vast experience in leading industry standards bodies and its participation and organization of interoperability testing events to TCCA initiatives, and helping to drive transition to the MCC over LTE and 5G eras.

“Softil’s decision to become a member of TCCA is welcomed. We look forward to the benefits that Softil’s expertise can bring to the development of open, interoperable standards for critical broadband to enhance public safety,” says Tony Gray, TCCA’s Chief Executive.

“Any revolutionary technology such as MCC over LTE/5G combining a variety of products from various vendors can only advance through open standards, interoperability of market solutions and wholescale industry education,” adds Pierre Hagendorf, Softil’s CEO. “This explains why Softil sees joining leading critical communications organisations such as TCCA as critical.”

Technology standards a referred to as open standards mean they are openly published and available to all and provide a foundation for products from different companies to work with one another.

“The foundation of open standards can be summarized as practicality and enables developers to have access to best available, interoperable components from different vendors,” stresses Hagendorf. “Interoperability is not a destination, but a journey – every new release of a vendor’s product and every update in applicable standards requires interoperability with all competing or complementary products to be established.”

Interoperability is achieved through an extensive testing process and requires the cooperation of multiple companies and organizations.

Softil’s rich pedigree in the development of global standards

Softil’s history in the development of global industry standards dates back to 1995 when it was first known as RADVISION and contributed to the works of the ITU-T, IETF, 3GPP, ETSI and other standards bodies over the years. It was on the board of IMTC (International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium) for more than 20 years, and was President of the body for more than 11 years. As IMTC was the leading organization in interoperability of multimedia technologies, Softil also chaired multiple IMTC Activity Groups, such as H.323, Conferencing over IP, 3G-324M and IMS.

Softil also held Board positions in the SIP Forum, IMS Forum and UC Interoperability Forum and participated in the work of OMA, GSMA, oneM2M, GCF and many other organizations and has also participated in hundreds of interoperability testing events including IMTC SuperOp!, IMS Forum Plugfets, SIP Forum SIPit and SIMPLEit and ETSI Plugtests.