By Catherine Sbeglia Nin
At Wednesday’s 2022 National Sheriffs’ Association annual conference, Verizon Frontline unveiled a “reimagined,” connected police cruiser. The prototype, called the Mobile Utility Technology Transport (MUTT), leverages the carrier’s mmWave and C-Band 5G network and several additional connectivity and computing features.
Currently, the vehicle — a refurbished Chevrolet Tahoe — is designed to support 4G LTE, 5G and 5G connectivity to Mission Critical Push To Talk (MCPTT), General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) and Land Mobile Radio (LMR) communications capabilities, as well as two laptops, a tablet, a smartphone, a printer and an onboard server.
MUTT’s built-in kit will allow it to deploy a drone, which will enable first responders on the scene of an emergency to gain enhanced situational awareness or to stream video in near-real time back to an Emergency Operations Center (EOC), according to Verizon. In addition, the prototype has two routers — compared to the either a single router or a MiFi tupical of police cruisers — making it possible to dedicate one to the heavy data usage required by video and another to remaining communications needs.
Verizon said that plans to add satellite connectivity to the MUTT are in the works.
“Verizon Frontline’s MUTT will be able to serve as a mobile, dedicated private network, and will help ensure first responders on the front lines have access to the secure, reliable mission-critical communications capabilities they need, when they need them most,” the carrier said.
Last year, Verizon Frontline announced a Tactical Humanitarian Operations Response (THOR) vehicle, developed in collaboration with the Department of Defense through NavalX and the SoCal Tech Bridge. The THOR vehicle is a mobile and private rapid-response command center that is compatible with Verizon’s mmWave 5G network and mobile edge compute (MEC) and is suitable for hard-to-reach or hard-to-navigate environments and situations, such as in military environments or when responding to natural disasters like wildfires, hurricanes or tornadoes.
