BAPCO Review
own keynote session, this time from ESN programme director
Bryan Clark, someone whose tone could best be described as
cautiously optimistic, following the emergency reboot of the
UK public safety broadband project in the middle of last year.
His theme was ‘2019: the year vision becomes reality’.
While not necessarily giving away anything that visitors to
BAPCO 2019 didn’t already know (although there were some
newsy nuggets in there, which we’ll get to later), Clark did
prove himself to be eminently quotable. More to the point,
he has also clearly been brought onboard as a capable
and reassuring presence, communicating both realism and
self-awareness, as well as a sense of actually being relaxed
within the role.
He began his presentation by reiterating the reason for the
roll-out of ESN in the first place, focusing on the benefits
it will bring to emergency services personnel. He did this
in part through the use of a piece of video marketing,
the voiceover for which he later revealed was provided by
Hollywood actor – and frequent EE collaborator – Kevin
Bacon. From here, he moved on to explain why the project
is currently so behind in relation to the original anticipated
roll-out date.
“It’s a big programme,” he said, “involving 350,000
customers, 137 separate user organisations, 50,000 vehicles
that we have to kit out, more than 100 aircraft, and nearly
30 direct suppliers not including the rest of the supply chain.
One of the things I learned as an engineer is that before you
do anything, you need to work out how big it’s going to be.
The plain fact of the matter is that it’s hardly surprising that
it’s late.”
He continued: “It’s been my job over the past 10 months
to work out how to get the roll-out back on track. We’ve
been doing that through a detailed review of where we’ve got
to, and where the next steps need to be. The programme now
has an approved, very clear plan to complete the technical
element of the work, most of which should be done by late
summer next year.
“I think we can say we’re in the fun phase now, moving
from the theoretical to the practical. We’re starting to gain
velocity, moving into the next stage of the work, which is how
can we assure ourselves that this works effectively from an
operational point of view?”
Clark followed this with a discussion on the recently
deployed ESN Assure coverage testing solution, as well as
news of the network’s first planned critical PTT call, taking
place an anticipated three weeks after his presentation. He
also said the programme should be in a “great place” by the
end of this calendar year, having both completed the core
components of the project and developed a “clear plan” for
testing in an operational context.
Without wanting to labour the comparison between
FirstNet and the Emergency Services Network too much, one
of the core differences between the two programmes is the
latter’s reliance – at least at the beginning – on proprietary
technology rather than open standards. This is a situation that
has now been rectified, with the UK Home Office moving
away from its original bespoke solution and towards Kodiak, a
Motorola-owned hybrid product that will provide a missioncritical
push-to-talk service using both narrowband and
broadband (MCPTT over the ESN network) in the interim
period prior to the shutdown of Airwave.
In the US, broadband is being used
every day, by every public safety
user. Some of that is commercial grade
and some of it is FirstNet, but that’s
the direction the market is going in
With that in mind, and as compelling as Clark’s first
official BAPCO appearance was, perhaps the highlight of
the show from an ESN perspective was the opportunity
to view the Kodiak interface (as installed on a Samsung
handheld smart device) in person at the Home Office
stand. This was also accompanied by an equally compelling,
apparently functional, EE gateway device, mounted in
the back of a police car. The picture, it would appear, is
becoming clearer all the time.
One core area in which the ESN discussion is still ongoing,
however, is in relation to air-to-ground coverage, something
that was addressed by product director Steve Whatson as part
of the ‘Options for A2G communications in LTE’ session on
day one. (The session also included Hans Petter Naper, chief
engineer of the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection).
Speaking of the task in hand, Whatson – who began his
presentation by flagging up that the A2G device procurement
process is still ongoing – said: “We currently have 78 sites,
with about 83 per cent coverage above 1,000 feet. There’s
about 115 aircraft in total using the network, including
the National Police Air Service, air ambulances, Maritime
and Coastguard Agency, and the Ministry of Defence, with
anything between one and five radios being used within
the airframe.
“The current arrangements are completely interoperable
with the terrestrial Airwave network, and completely
seamless. No-one sits in the airframe, changing spectrum
or the network, it just does it automatically. These are key
requirements as we go forward into ESN.”
Moving onto the subject of broadband A2G procurement,
he continued: “Ideally, we’d like to align our new procurement
with more of a COTS (commercial off-the-shelf)-based
device. We want to get away from bespoke if we can, but we’ll
see what the market offers.
“Clearly, we want to be 4G LTE, and we also are keen
to determine whether there’s an acceptable service coming
up from our 4G terrestrial network. It needs to be fully
interoperable with the ground-based ESN network, so that
as the aircraft transits through the different heights, the radio
makes the changes automatically. These are the principles on
which the procurement is founded.”
Whatson continued by saying that the programme requires
support for Band 40 (2345MHz), which is the spectrum it
is looking to use above 500 feet. This is the height, he said,
to which coverage is provided on EE’s terrestrial network.
Coverage ultimately needs to stretch up to 10,000 feet, which
is the maximum height at which UK public safety aircraft
tend to fly.
Interoperability and economies of scale
As is invariably the case at BAPCO events, the primary
focus at Coventry 2019 – quite understandably – was on
the roll-out of the major public safety networks themselves,
April 2019 @CritCommsToday 27