By Jesse Robbins, Orion Founder and Chairman

I’m proud to announce that the Orion Push to Talk app for iOS is now FirstNet Certified and listed in the FirstNet App Catalog. When first responders use the Orion Push to Talk app on a FirstNet Ready smartphone, teams can respond to emergencies faster and more efficiently.

Orion Push to Talk connects public safety teams anywhere they are with the push of a button. Use the talk button in the app to talk to team members, or add an Onyx wearable to keep your phone in your pocket and still stay in sync with your team.

Last week, we also announced partnerships with the FirstNet Authority and ResponderXLabs to support our mission of improving communication and workflows for public safety. As a firefighter and EMT, I’m excited that today we’re taking take that mission a step further.

What is FirstNet?

FirstNet is the first-ever nationwide communications ecosystem exclusively for public safety. In partnership with the First Responder Network Authority, it brings a much-needed technology upgrade to first responders.

FirstNet helps law enforcement, firefighters and emergency medical service crews stay connected and share the information they need to help keep their communities safe and secure. It gives first responders an “always-on” connection so they can communicate – regardless of crowd size or network traffic.

How Does Orion Help First Responders?

My experiences in firefighting and emergency management repeatedly teach me the value of keeping teams heads up and in sync. With our voice-first platform and next-generation wearables and apps, Orion gives public safety teams a heads-up, eyes-free experience. Because they’re more situationally aware, first responders can communicate without losing focus, across any distance, anywhere in the world.

How Do First Responders Get Orion’s FirstNet App?

Download the FirstNet Certified Orion Push to Talk app directly from the App Store.

Or download the fact sheet to learn all about it:

Get the Orion Push to Talk for FirstNet® Fact Sheet

If you have a question about how Orion can help your public safety organization, contact our sales team at info@orionlabs.io or use the contact form at the bottom of this page. We’ve helped agencies throughout the world improve their public safety efforts.

First responders and eligible public safety organizations can communicate in real-time to stay connected and better protect their communities

SAN FRANCISCO (Dec. 5, 2018) — Orion Labs, provider of the award-winning Orion voice-enabled platform for real-time workforce communication and collaboration, today announced that its Orion Push to Talk iOS 5.2.8 mobile application is now FirstNet Certified™ and included in the FirstNet App Catalog. First responders can use Orion’s voice communication platform with FirstNet’s priority access and preemption services, enabling teams to respond to emergencies faster and more efficiently.

FirstNet is the nationwide communications platform dedicated to America’s first responders and public safety community. It’s being built with AT&T in a public-private partnership with the First Responder Network Authority to favor the important work first responders do. It offers technology, features and functionality designed to properly handle the rigorous, specific and niche demands of first responders. With this much-needed technology upgrade, first responders can connect to the critical information they need every day and in every emergency.

“We’re pleased that Orion Labs’ push-to-talk application is now FirstNet Certified™,” said Bob Sloan, Chief Operating Officer, FirstNet at AT&T. “Having options is important when it comes to first responders’ communications tools.  As a FirstNet Certified™ application, public safety can be confident that Orion Labs’ push-to-talk app is a trusted solution that meets FirstNet requirements for relevancy, security, data privacy, mobility, resiliency, and scalability.”

Historically, first responders have relied primarily on traditional land mobile radios (LMR) to stay connected during mission-critical situations. With a new breed of push-to-talk mobile devices on the market today, public safety teams can augment those communications and quickly communicate across their organizations and between emergency agencies with the touch of a button. First responders on FirstNet using Orion Labs’ mobile application receive priority above commercial users, helping to alleviate network congestion and offering a means of highly secure, reliable and boundary-free communication.

“Orion Labs was born from our experiences in the fire and emergency medical services. We’re incredibly excited to bring Orion’s advanced communication platform to support first responders on FirstNet,” said Orion Labs’ Founder and CEO, Jesse Robbins. “Orion is honored to meet the high requirements for FirstNet Certified™ apps and hopes to be one part in helping public safety teams in their mission to save lives and better protect their communities.”

The Orion push-to-talk application is available now through the FirstNet App Catalog and the Apple App Store.

About Orion Labs

Orion Labs is a voice-first communication platform for mobile teams. Orion delivers instant and secure voice, location, and data messaging across a constellation of connected devices, applications, and AI-powered services. This powerful combination enables mobile teams to collaborate without losing focus, on any device, across any distance, without boundaries. The Orion platform includes the Orion Push to Talk app and Onyx wearables. These work with Orion’s web-based command center, advanced location services, language translation, voice bots, and workflows. Orion interoperates with traditional VoIP and Land Mobile Radio (LMR) systems, and Orion’s APIs and SDKs enable developers to build on and extend the Orion platform.

Orion was recently named an IDC Innovator, received an Edison Award for Voice Technology, and won the 2018 “IoT Wearables Innovation Vendor of the Year” and “AI Breakthrough Best Overall Bot Solution” awards. The company was founded by cloud infrastructure pioneers Jesse Robbins and Greg Albrecht, who were inspired by their unique experiences using traditional radios as first responders. Orion is backed by leading investors and is based in San Francisco, CA.

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Media Contact

Racepoint Global

Allison DeLeo, 415-694-6700

press@orionlabs.io

We’ve been hard at work building the features that you want most. The most frequently requested features are the ability to send private messages to just one person, and an update to the Android app to bring it the same ease of use and clean look as our iOS app. Starting today, Orion Pro users on iOS can try a preview of direct messaging, and Android users will soon have a brand new app experience!

Available Today: Direct Messaging Preview on iOS

Group messaging is ideal for many situations, especially when you don’t know who has the answer to your question. But there are also times when you know exactly who needs the information you have. Or you want to minimize messages to the group so that everyone can stay focused on what they’re doing.

Starting today, Orion Pro users on iOS can simply press and hold a person’s name in their group to send a direct message. It gives you more control over how you communicate with the people on your team.

Download Orion Push to Talk for iOS in the App Store.

Coming Soon: New Orion app on Android

We’ve learned a lot from our app redesign on iOS. Over the past several months, we’ve completely rebuilt the Android app from the ground up, with simplicity and reliability as our top focus.

Along with transforming the visual design to be cleaner and easier to read, we’ve made the app more intuitive to navigate, and faster to add the people you need to your group.

The new Orion Android app will be available very soon!

At Orion, we are constantly working to give your team more superpowers with instant voice communication. We look forward to hearing your feedback! Please email us at support@orionlabs.io if you have any suggestions or questions.

When you’re using your Onyx to communicate, you expect it to work — no matter what.

For your device to function, the first step is making sure it stays connected to your phone and the Orion app over Bluetooth Low Energy. While your phone manages the Bluetooth connection, our app communicates with your Onyx device. This connection between our app and your device is essential for your Onyx to function properly.

At the same time, the iOS operating system must work to maintain your phone’s battery life. So if you haven’t used our app in a while (especially if you’ve been using other applications that require lots of resources), the app session will be terminated by iOS, which would then sever the connection to your Onyx.

Fortunately, we’ve put work into making everything work seamlessly when this happens — which is where CoreBluetooth State Restoration comes in.

With CoreBluetooth State Restoration, we hand off the connection to iOS when it terminates our application and let the operating system manage the connection for us while the app is in the “Not Running” state. By transferring the connection instead of breaking it, you won’t feel the shakes, hear the beeps, or see the lights that typically indicate that your Onyx has disconnected.

Next, when you push your Onyx to send a message, our app immediately launches in the background and iOS hands the connection back to us, at which point we send the message in its entirety. This handoff feature gives us a seamless behind-the-scenes link to your Onyx, without dropping the connection or interfering with your work.

CoreBluetooth State Restoration also takes over our reconnection scan, so even if you turn off your Onyx or walk away from your phone, the app relaunches as soon as you turn on your device or walk back into range.

In addition to lots of other work from our iOS and Onyx firmware teams, CoreBluetooth State Restoration is just one part of the bigger picture when it comes to keeping your Onyx connected and functional at all times.

Want to see how it works? Download the Orion Push to Talk app from the iOS App Store and connect your Onyx. If you don’t have Onyx and want your own, pick up a pair on Amazon.