Spain and Portugal
12
www.criticalcomms.com July 2019
towards broadband is expected to be
long, and we will still see a few years of
coexistence between both technologies.”
Juan Carlos Hernandez, general
manager, Spain at Airbus, says its
main customers are focused on midlife
upgrades for their narrowband
networks to ensure their operational
use until 2030 as a minimum. “We
are mainly in proof of concept trials
and ongoing demonstrations for
these services with our missioncritical
customers.” He adds that the
first of these trials began this year
and they are a mix, with some using
both the company’s Tactilon Dabat
TETRA/LTE hybrid smartphone and
its Tactilon Agnet solution, which
provides smartphones with two-way
radio-like functionality and multimedia
messaging while also allowing
smartphone and two-way radio users
to communicate with each other, and
others just using Tactilon Agnet.
Hernandez adds that initial feedback
from the trials is confirming that
these solutions can provide missioncritical
users’ operations with increased
versatility and efficiency, and he
highlights the ability to manage both
narrowband and broadband networks
via a single tool.
Last year, Motorola Solutions
transitioned Telecom CLM’s TETRA
network in Castilla-La Mancha, which
provides the region’s public safety user
organisations (police, fire brigades
and ambulances) with mission-critical
communications, to the company’s
latest TETRA system – DIMETRA X
Core. The network, which consists of
more than 100 sites, was also equipped
with WAVE, which allows TETRA and
broadband users to communicate with
each other over a commercial network.
Redomero says this was introduced
because the user organisations “wanted
to have the option to include users
that perhaps don’t want to carry both
a radio and a smartphone”.
Portugal
Turning to Portugal, the government
has recently reached an agreement to
acquire all the shares in SIRESP from
the other shareholders (PT Moveis –
Altice Portugal – holds 52.1 per cent,
Motorola Solutions holds 14.9 per cent
and the Portuguese state holds 33 per
cent). This is so that it can exercise full
control of the mission-critical operator,
following a dispute with Altice over
payments for the network hardening
that took place in the wake of the 2017
forest fires; the purchase is expected to
close in December.
Motorola’s Redomero says his
company is in the late stages of working
to upgrade SIRESP’s core network
to DIMETRA X Core and that this
work will probably finish next year.
In addition, Motorola Solutions
is working with SIRESP and the
Portuguese government to improve the
network in several other areas.
Sepura’s Rocha says: “The Portuguese
market is very clear and stable. SIRESP
is here to stay for the coming years,
I don’t foresee any investment in the
short term to move to a different
technology, and TETRA will remain
the technology for SIRESP. There are
a lot of discussions around SIRESP – its
quality and the service it provides,
mostly related to the lack of coverage
in specific areas and specific events like
the fires we had last year. However,
the Portuguese government is working
to improve the conditions and the
performance of the network to make
sure that the country has a reliable,
robust and future-proof public safety
communications network.
“I have a very positive view of
the SIRESP network, which is a
little bit different from the common
perspective – if you read the
newspapers, or watch the news on the
television, there are many voices saying
awful things about SIRESP. It’s not
perfect but it is many steps ahead of
competitive solutions in many aspects
and has provided a good missioncritical
communications service to the
country for the past 10 years.”
Rocha doesn’t foresee many
opportunities for new TETRA
networks within Portugal’s private
sector. “Portugal is a small country
with a population of 10 million
people. You can count on the fingers of
one hand any TETRA project outside
SIRESP.” In addition, the country’s
mining concerns are too small for
TETRA and as a consequence opt for
DMR Tier III or Nexedge.
He adds that in the near future there
will be “a strong need to refresh the
TETRA terminal fleet. We supplied
TETRA terminals to the country’s
public safety users eight to 10 years
ago, and even with the high quality of
the STP8000 series, the radios that are
currently in use are old and need to be
refreshed. The biggest users of TETRA
terminals in Portugal all say the same
thing: ‘We are desperate to buy new
radios.’ Portugal is still going through
a crisis, the level of investment of our
government is low, and the investment
needed for the refresh of terminals is
being delayed again and again.”
He explains that smartphone use
by Portuguese police officers is very
widespread, but they typically use
their personal devices (often as a
secondary means of communication).
Rocha also says that the country’s fire
brigades tend to use analogue and
DMR radios in addition to cellphones
for communication as they have a
limited number of TETRA radios,
which are mostly used for multi-agency
operations. Cost is a big factor here,
given the lack of funds available in the
country. “If you are responsible for
the fire brigade, you can either buy a
TETRA radio for around €500 or a
DMR radio for €200; then you need to
take a decision, and most of them will
buy DMR radios because they are
what they can afford to pay – ‘I would
prefer to have a Mercedes but if I can
only buy a Dacia, I will drive a Dacia’.”
From what we have heard, it is clear
that the region as a whole is seeing
strong growth, while the availability of
funding remains an issue for Portugal’s
public safety sector, with the need to
refresh the country’s ageing fleet of
TETRA terminals being a primary
concern. Any transition to missioncritical
broadband is clearly quite far
in the future, with user organisations
still at the stage of trying to fully
understand its potential and its
operational implications. Given that
next year’s Critical Communications
World will be held in Madrid, I hope
that this has given you an advance feel
for the themes that will be discussed at
that event, and it will be interesting to
see in June 2020 how the conversation
has moved on.
The Zaragoza city
tramway uses a
TETRA system
supplied by
Teltronic
/www.criticalcomms.com