Samsung has inked a deal with the UK’s emergency services to provide smartphones to 250,000 police, paramedics and fire crews.
The UK Home Office is preparing to deploy an upgraded network and phones for use by police, firemen, and ambulances.
Samsung will be supplying its specially designed smartphones from 2018.
Previous disaster phones supported only voice calls, but the new phones support mobile data services, video live streaming, and come with various applications for use by trained professionals.
The company will also supply various accessories for use with the phones.
The South Korean tech giant first showed off the public safety use gear back in June 2015, which are based on public safety LTE standards.
It was last year selected as the vendor to provide South Korea with a boosted emergency services network. In February this year, it showed off live video streaming between handsets and mission control.
The business is part of Samsung’s enterprise mobile portfolio. The firm also collaborated with SK Telecom to redeploy South Korea’s first LTE-R service.
The British Home Office awarded Samsung the three-year contract, which will see the Koreans supply toughened, water-resistant 4G devices to emergency services.
These smartphones will offer both hardware and software features that will support emergency services functions and critical voice services, according to Samsung, including a “push to talk” button.
