Public safety system revenue for indoor wireless, excluding signal sources, will reach $1.8 billion by 2021 growing at 15.8 percent CAGR, ABI Research forecasts.

North America will represent the largest market for indoor public safety equipment growing by 1.5 times its value in 2017.

The indoor public safety equipment market in the Asia Pacific region has the highest growth of all regions at 2.3 times its value in 2017.

ABI Research examined the intersection of the FirstNet/AT&T radio access network with in-building wireless and Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS). AT&T started its 5-year multi-billion-dollar National Broadband Public Safety network buildout, also known as FirstNet, in-building wireless is already receiving an immediate boost.
“AT&T has already made its significant in-building resources consisting of more than 6,000 distributed antenna systems and 40,000 Wi-Fi access points available to the first responder community,” said Nick Marshall, research director at ABI Research.

Since over 80 percent of wireless traffic originates or terminates indoors, ensuring that a strong signal is available to first responders indoors in emergency situations becomes a mission-critical service.

The new ABI Research report said early and frequent collaboration with AT&T/FirstNet and the Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ) is essential to ensure successful indoor FirstNet performance.

“Overlooking FirstNet standards for in-building public safety may compromise effectiveness of this mission-critical service. In addition, multiple AHJs with differing standards for indoor public safety wireless systems, system ownership and funding are among the challenges discussed in the report,” Marshall said.