Motorola Solutions Announces Single-band P25 Smart Radio With LTE For Fire, EMS

Motorola Solutions announces the APX N70 XE, a single-band version of its smart P25 radio—with LTE connectivity—that is designed to support the communications needs for firefighters and emergency-medical-services personnel

By Donny Jackson, Editor

Motorola Solutions has announced the APX N70 XE, a single-band version of its smart P25 radio—with LTE connectivity—that is designed to support the communications needs for firefighters and emergency-medical-services personnel.

Motorola Solutions’ director of product management for Astro devices, Scott Alazraki said the new 700/800 MHz fire radio’s physical features and functionality are almost identical to the all-band APX NEXT XE that was introduced in 2020, with a few differences.

“It’s basically in a more slender form factor—being a single-band radio, rather than our all-band products,” Alazraki said during an interview with Urgent Communications. “It does have all of the features, although the display is a little smaller to allow room for another highly desired feature—the [six programmable] preset buttons.

“But, other than that, it’s a single-band version [of the all-band fire radio]. The applications that run on our all-band version … all run on this device, just like on the APX NEXT XE.”

These applications include SmartConnect, which seamlessly switches communication on the device to broadband connectivity when the user is beyond radio coverage; SmartLocate, which regularly updates the device’s location; SmartMessaging, which support multimedia sharing; and SmartMapping, which displays the location of crews near an incident.

In addition, the new APX N70 XE supports the latest application: SmartIncident. This application is designed to let dispatchers push incident information to the radio via messaging, images, video or audio clips.

“It means a firefighter or EMS officer does not have to be in their vehicle to get the information they traditionally would get from a dispatcher pushing CAD-type information—instead, it puts it right in their hand,” Alazraki said.

“So, you can see a video of what a smoke plume looks like as you’re on the way [to the incident].

“Critical data that CAD has can be pushed to your device.”

Director of technology and planning for the Bonita Springs Fire Control and Rescue District in Florida, Jim Kauffman said he believes such smart applications improve the safety and effectiveness of fire and EMS personnel during response efforts.

“Our new generation of firefighters are device-savvy and expect tools and technology that make their jobs safer and more efficient,” Kauffman said in a prepared statement. “With the APX N70 XE, incident commanders can have confidence in the up-to-date location information of their crews and in knowing that their crews will remain connected, even when outside of radio coverage areas.”

Alazraki said this new single-band device is designed to support any future applications that will be added to the company’s portfolio of smart application services.

As compelling as these smart applications are on devices like the APX N70 XE, they are not provided at the cost of any fundamental mission-critical voice functionality, according to Alazraki.

“Something we stress a lot with our smart radios is that they are—first and foremost—an LMR P25 radio,” he said. “Customers say, ‘I want to push to talk, release to listen.’ That’s table stakes. That’s the basics of what a radio has to do, and we feel we do it better than anyone.”

Indeed, Alazraki emphasized that the APX N70 XE also has many of physical features that fire and EMS user expected, such a rugged exterior and larger knobs for use with gloves. This is complemented by ViQi technology, which is an AI-voice assistant that lets a user verbally changes channels or volume levels—all while keeping the user’s free to do other tasks.

While it was announced today, the APX N70 XE is not expected to be commercially available until the third quarter of this year, Alazraki said. This first version will operate in the 700/800 MHz band, but Motorola Solutions anticipates supporting operations on other spectrum frequencies with single-band devices in the future, he said.

Alazraki declined to share any pricing information about the APX N70 XE, other than acknowledging that it will be less expensive than an all-band version of the device.

Attendees of the FDIC International event being conducted in Indianapolis can learn more about the APX N70 XE by visiting Motorola Solutions representatives in Booth 309 during exhibit-hall hours on Thursday and Friday.