Australia
Evolution in a land
Down Under
Like many countries around
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Following the recent issue of a ‘request for proposal’ in relation to the roll-out of public safety
broadband, Philip Mason gives an overview of mission-critical communications in Australia
www.criticalcomms.com January 2019
the world, Australia is
preparing to evolve in the
direction of a national mobile
broadband capability for
public safety and government agencies.
As part of this roll-out, it is envisioned
that any such capability – at least in
the rst instance – would complement
existing mission-critical narrowband
systems, which State governments
continue to invest signicant funds in.
While the timescale and preferred
model for this is still being deliberated
– again, not unlike many other nations
– what is apparent is that there will
be some unique (and not so unique)
challenges to overcome on the road in
order to drastically increase bandwidth.
ese include the sheer amount of
ground any potential network(s) would
need to cover (within a landmass just
shy of three million square miles), as
well as the extraordinary remoteness
of some of that terrain, and its
enormouscoastline.
As has been the case with existing
government narrowband LMR systems,
each state will likely have a strong voice
as to when and to what degree the
public safety mobile broadband (PSMB)
technology is rolled out. ere is also
little reason to think that the situation
will be palpably dierent in several years’
time, in relation to a technology which
by denition will be available from a
Smartzone/ASTRO technology,” he
says. “South Australia followed with
a similar solution that also included
wide-area paging and a dedicated
mobile data network. Tasmania also
started a shared network service,
primarily for police and utilities, based
on GE Ericsson EDACS, while in
Victoria a statewide – rural – network
service was provisioned for government
by Telstra based on dual mode
MPT1327/analogue technology.”
Coming more up to date, he
continues: “In recent years a
Queensland GRN Government Radio
Network has been established via a
consortium led by Telstra. Historically,
several agencies in Australia have
also run dedicated narrowband
datasolutions.
“In every state, governments have
continued to fund extensions and
enhancements to the GRNs. ese
have included the refreshment of
technology and improvements to
individual and shared command and
We’ve seen many
outages from commercial
networks which, if inconvenient
for users of non-critical data,
would be far more than
that for rst-responders
variety of dierent providers (particularly
given the way in which international
open standards are being driven to
include mission-critical features).
It is clear then that Australia is a
particularly fascinating subject for
discussion, with both its politicians
and public safety agencies attempting
to understand the full implications of
any potential move from narrowband.
Before we can talk about the future,
however, it is necessary to understand
the present and the past.
A long and winding road
Kevin Graham is the managing director
of consulting rm Global Digital
Solutions, as well as founding chairman
and ongoing board member of the
Australasian Critical Communications
Forum, which is the local chapter of
TCCA. As such, he has been involved
with public safety communications in
Australia for many years.
Giving an account of the events
leading to the current situation, he
begins with the original eorts by state
governments to provision shared
agency networks. ese were intended
to begin the migration from the
numerous analogue networks used by
individual agencies.
“During the 1990s the New South
Wales government led the way with the
rst shared government radio network,
which was based on the Motorola
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