Public safety networks in the United States are undergoing a significant transformation proving beneficial to the wide range of radio manufacturers serving the industry, according to a new report from Visant Strategies.

Public safety agencies are now embracing technological changes and achieving early adopter status in respect to a number of disruptive technologies including SDR, peer to peer meshes and public wireless LANs, the study finds.

"There will be great change and today the industry has proceeded about midway down a fairly clear evolutionary path culminating in digital, fully interoperable, standards-based radios supporting flexible ad hoc architectures, frequency and protocol agility and high speed data," said study author Dan Sweeney. "These changes are occurring very quickly for this industry but public safety organizations are still unlikely to follow the rapid IT equipment replacement cycles of civilian enterprises since government funding cycles havent changed yet. This movement to digital, I/P-based wireless systems capable of carrying high-speed data will continue strongly into next decade."

Shipments of public safety radios are due to increase substantially in a number of areas, according to the report, "US Public Safety: The New Era of Wireless Networks." Digital land mobile radio shipments will create almost $100 million in revenues in 2007 compared to an expected $450 million in 2012. Shipments of point-to-point microwave radios used for public safety will more than double from 2007 to 2012, according to the report, as will revenues for radios used at 4.9GHz.

The report details changes in ICs, radios and wireless networks used in public safety and public safety regulatory, national security and spectrum issues. It also provides shipments and revenues for the different vertical public safety radio segments such as land mobile, digital land mobile, satellite, point-to-point and civilian broadband radios as well as overall spending on public safety networks through 2012. It also details sales and revenues of public safety base stations and repeaters and radios for use on 4.9GHz for the same time period.