Critical Communications World 2019 2019 WORLD
than just one, with the system being
shared and secured for 16 different
government agencies.”
He continued: “In Malaysia, a
minimum of six agencies will be working
hand-in-hand during incidents such
as fl oods, which could include the
police, civil defence, the fi re brigade,
local authorities, ambulance services,
hospitals and so on. They all have their
own doctrine and sharing is not always
seen as the best way forward, so we
needed to come up with something
through which they could rest assured
that their part of the network is not
being compromised.”
The answer, according to Sangarajoo,
was to build dedicated virtual private
networks (VPNs), each of which is
secured and encrypted on behalf of the
agency in question.
Staying on the subject of research
and development, he said the company
had spent around 100 million US dollars
over the last ten years, investing heavily
in a range of fi elds including network
connectivity, GIS, dispatching, analytics,
simulation systems and so on. “The only
reason to do this is that we would like to
build indigenous technologies, in order
for Malaysia to have its own products
and solutions.”
Discussing how the technology is likely
to progress, not just in relation to public
safety but also initiatives such as the
roll-out of new transport infrastructure,
he concluded by saying that there is now
the need to add to the current TETRA
infrastructure. “Communications systems
using TETRA are still valid, because that’s
the best solution available for voice.
But moving forward we will need facial
recognition technology, the monitoring
of certain passengers in the transport
environment if required, and much more.
“In order to do all that, we will need
for transportation in Malaysia to have
its own broadband spectrum, and work
will be done by MCMC on providing that.
Also, for public safety, our aspiration is to
roll out 5G. We do not see that we will be
going through an LTE route.”
These Malaysia-centred presentations
were followed by two more focusing
on specifi c national public safety
communications systems. The fi rst of
these was delivered by president of
BDBOS Andreas Gegenfurtner, after
whom Nina Myren from the Norwegian
Directorate for Civil Protection (DSB)
discussed the situation in that country.
Picking up on Sangarajoo’s broadband
roll-out theme, Gegenfurtner continued
by discussing the future of public safety
comms during a presentation titled ‘A
network of networks’. He said: “BDBOS
is now modernising the German PPDR
network with the next step in mind
– that is, the migration of data and
voice to broadband. In doing so we
envision a change of paradigm, with
our future network being completely
different. It will necessarily integrate
dedicated, commercial and thirdparty
infrastructures, and it will rely
on heterogenous technologies. It will
inevitably be a network of networks.”
Communications systems
using TETRA are still valid,
because that’s the best
solution available for voice
Myren, meanwhile, discussed
Norway’s experience with roaming
between national TETRA networks, with
its own system (Nødnett) already linked
with Sweden’s – Rakel – and Finland’s
– Virve. Going into greater detail, she
discussed a recent operational incident
where Norwegian fi refi ghters aided
their Swedish counterparts to help fi ght
the forest fi res in the latter country
last summer.
According to her, this situation
revealed some challenges; for instance,
that not all of those on the ground had
correctly programmed terminals. Some
of the Swedish fi refi ghters meanwhile
hadn’t been trained to use the talkgroups
in question. Myren suggested
that this highlighted the need to
facilitate communications between user
organisations in each country, while
also noting the close co-operation that
exists between the Norwegian health
directorate and its Swedish counterpart.
She then discussed the DSB’s work
to introduce Nødnett Connect, an
over-the-top service, based on Motorola
Solutions’ Kodiak platform. This will
allow smartphone users to securely
communicate with colleagues using
TETRA, both over commercial networks
and Wi-Fi. However, it lacks priority, and
is not considered mission-critical.
According to Myren, part of the
thinking behind the project was that:
“In the future, it is likely that all public
safety critical communications services
will run over commercial networks or in
close co-operation with them. It allows
us to get experience with that future,
which has great value for us but no big
risk as we are not swapping Nødnett for
something else.”
Some of the Nødnett Connect usecases
mentioned by Myren include using
it to allow communication when out of
TETRA network coverage. It also includes
communication with people who don’t
normally carry TETRA radios, such as
doctors, and also as part of temporary
communications during large incidents
such as forest fi res. The latter could
potentially see the local community being
able to install the app on their phones.
It can also be used to allow the sharing
of videos and photos. The project is
being executed in three phases: plan
and design, test and pilot, and launch of
service. Myren said that the plan is for
pilots to take place this year, with the goal
of going live with the service in 2020.
Railways and public networks
Some of the same themes were taken
up during a key panel session looking at
‘Building a critical broadband network:
best practices’. Speaking as part of this,
Pierre Tane, solutions expert for missioncritical
networks at Kapsch CarrierCom,
discussed the views of the railway
community, particularly in relation
to coverage. Tane said that in Europe in
particular, operators are looking to reuse
the 900MHz spectrum and related assets
which they have already invested in. The
general view, he said, is that dedicated
networks are required, with sole reliance
on public networks not being seen in a
positive light.
Reasons for this include railways being
subject to incredibly formal coverage
obligations, which in practice require
extensive verifi cation, along with the
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