that this model already exists, with
firefighters using direct mode analogue
radios on the fireground, with the
link between the team and dispatch
being the incident commander who
also has a trunked radio. Rehbehn
added that this approach is shared by
London Fire Brigade. Ludwig chimed
in, saying that this approach doesn’t
solve the interoperability issue: “If one
organisation goes for DMR direct
mode and the other goes for TETRA
direct mode, they can’t work together.
The second issue I see is you need
spectrum for this.”
“There are a number of ways of
killing this cat at the moment,” said
Gray, “but unless everybody is killing
the same cat the same way, we’re not
going to have the interoperability and
we’re not going to have the volume
in the market, so we’re losing a huge
amount of that promise of LTE being
the global standard.”
North American
project update
The last topic of discussion was the
recent progress on TETRA projects in
North America. Martin kicked this off
by drawing attention to PowerTrunk’s
recent win with Cooperative Energy
– the resulting radio system will cover
roughly two-thirds of Mississippi. It
counts Diverse Power’s similar system,
which PowerTrunk also supplied,
among its neighbours and, according
to Martin, the latter currently covers
60 per cent of Georgia. He added
that public safety users are likely to
join Cooperative Energy’s network,
like they have with Diverse Power’s.
Martin also said PowerTrunk has a
project to provide Invista, a Texan
polymer manufacturer, with critical
communications and that it requires
intrinsically safe devices.
Turning to the work that
PowerTrunk is doing on behalf of
the New York City Metropolitan
Transportation Authority (MTA),
Martin said his company is supplying
TETRA equipment certified for use in
the 700MHz band (which is allocated
The airports tend to want
to interoperate with the
local jurisdictions and a lot of
times it drives them towards a
P25 solution; we fight that
on a regular basis
to public safety) and the radios are
capable of making P25 group calls to
comply with the requirement for radios
in that band to be able to operate
on the nationwide interoperability
channels. As the MTA holds spectrum
in 700MHz and 800MHz, the radios
are designed in both bands. Martin
added that some of the handsets
(around 1,300 – the project involves
circa 8,000 buses) have already been
shipped and that the first phase of
deployment will begin this year with
Staten Island.
Pallans briefly discussed the project
to provide Bermuda with a new
mission-critical narrowband network.
He said the request for proposals (RFP)
has been out for some time and that
at the time of the roundtable, he was
hoping to see the procurement process
(which had been put on hold due
to elections that replaced the entire
government) resume within the next
few weeks, as this would allow it to be
completed before the end of this year.
Monto explained that as Collins
Aerospace has completed its big push
of replacing its airport customers’
iDEN systems with TETRA, it is now
focused on meeting the needs of its
existing customer base. His colleague,
Richard Davis, added that one issue
they have encountered is that “the
airports tend to want to interoperate
with the local jurisdictions and a lot
of times it drives them towards a P25
solution; we fight that on a regular
basis”. He added that airports have
begun adopting PTT over Cellular
apps on their employees’ smartphones
at the low-end, non-mission-critical
part of the market.
Martin said one problem with
the debate around broadband versus
narrowband is that “customers are
putting investment on hold for years
because they believe LMR is going to
be replaced with broadband and are
waiting for something that will never
happen”. Gray added that this is a
generic problem as the “gluing effect”
resulting from the current hype around
5G is frustrating for “the people just
trying to get things done today in
today’s market”.
Clearly, while this debate is a
fascinating one, it does have real-world
consequences for the industry as a
whole. It will be interesting to see how
the conversation will have evolved in
a year’s time, given the ongoing work
of AT&T, the FirstNet Authority
and Verizon and the mission-critical
broadband projects under way in the
UK and South Korea.
April 2019 @CritCommsToday 25
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