NEW YORK, Sep 08, 2014 (BUSINESS WIRE) — The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has allowed another patent application from Rivada Networks. Rivada’s latest innovation will help keep emergency services connected.

“Right now,” explains Rivada CTO Clint Smith, “if you’re an incident commander on a congested commercial cellular network and you hit the send button on your phone, you’re placed into a queue”—which means that vital call might not go through if the network is overcrowded.

Rivada’s invention will allow non-essential traffic to be actively cleared from the network to ensure critical communication lines are kept open.

“Public Safety has long been wary of using cellular networks for mission-critical voice communications,” CTO Smith explained, because they need the networks to do better than place their calls first in queue. “Enhanced TPA addresses this concern for first responders using cellular networks in an emergency.”

Enhanced Tiered Priority Access can also alert non-priority users that there’s an emergency in the vicinity, and ask them to end their calls or limit their data use during the incident.

What’s more, Rivada’s enhancements to its patented Tiered Priority Access technology would allow a 911 operator, for example, to “reach through” a congested network to reconnect a dropped call from a subscriber trying to report an emergency. “This is the kind of technology that can really save lives,” Rivada CEO Declan Ganley said. “We’re proud to be working to make emergency services more effective and ordinary citizens safer.”

Article via: MarketWatch