Latin America
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www.criticalcomms.com March 2019
airport, which is the main airport
in Minas Gerais; and another very
important airport that we will make
public soon.”
Borgonovo says Motorola Solutions
also has customers for metros, railway
and utilities in Brazil. Interestingly, he
says the agribusiness sector is looking
to benet from data transmissions
via digital radio integrated with IoT
solutions and sensors. “Our equipment
is also used by giants in the pulp and
paper sector.” Mining and oil and gas
industries are also a source of contracts.
Fernandez Feito adds that pricing
can be erce. “Prices are very aggressive
in Latin America. We are dealing with
big companies who have a strong
central purchasing power.” He adds
that Hytera is working on proposals for
utility companies to enable SCADA
over TETRA to transmit maintenance
and operational data, as well as
traditional voice communications.
“Peru is also using TETRA for the
1,000km Gasoducto Camisea pipeline.
ey are using TETRA for voice and
SCADA to transmit operational and
maintenance data to the control room
and automating manual tasks, while
also providing an audit trail.”
MC LTE
Latin American governments are
considering harnessing broadband
LTE for public safety. But aside from
the cost implications, accessing LTE
spectrum for private networks is
tricky, says DAMM’s Pozzati. “4G
LTE critical communications are far
from becoming a reality because of the
diculty of getting the wide frequency
bands that LTE needs.”
Fernandez Feito observes that
spectrum is tightly controlled by
governments and few have reserved
LTE spectrum for public safety use.
“at means you have to work with the
mobile network operators in some way
if you want to provide LTE solutions
for public safety organisations.”
In Chile, WOM (formerly
Nextel Chile) has won a contract to
implement a US$350m broadband
platform to provide solutions for
public safety agencies. In Mexico, the
Red Compartida (Shared Network) –
the world’s rst wholesale-only LTE
network – is scheduled to cover 90 per
cent of the population by 2022.
Airbus plans to launch a Secure
MVNO on Red Compartida in May
using its Tactilon Agnet solution to
provide push-to-talk (PTT) broadband
applications over LTE. Given suitable
devices, end-users will be able to access
the Red Compartida SMVNO for
LTE services, the nationwide Mexsat
satellite network which covers the
whole country, and the IRIS Tetrapol
network, as Tactilon Agnet enables
backwards compatibility.
“Our public safety customers do not
see this new service as a replacement
for their existing narrowband solutions,
but more as a complement to their
existing services,” notes Fred Gallart,
head of Latin America at Secure Land
Communications, Airbus. “We also
plan to target the commercial market
using Tactilon Agnet solutions sold
through mobile operators.”
But new nancial models for
customers are also needed. “At the
moment, public safety personnel use
LTE devices paid out of their own
pockets for the air time or the devices,”
says Gallart. “Government budgets
need to be allocated for a new opex
model for broadband solutions, so that
public safety can begin to adopt all
the new technologies and applications
that will be implemented within
LTEplatforms.”
Motorola Solutions’ Orsei is more
cautious about relying on commercial
networks. “e services must be very
well organised and regulated and
the MVNO will still need to make a
business return. You don’t want it going
bust when public safety organisations
are relying on it!”
Applications
e kinds of digital LMR and
LTE services and applications now
being used by customers include
geolocation, encryption, integration
and multimedia data transmission, says
Borgonovo. “Geolocalisation makes it
possible to have visibility of ocers and
teams in the eld, as well as machines
and equipment. Encryption prevents
criminals from listening into the
police’s conversations.
“Integration is used to maintain the
legacy systems and unify agencies so
they can work together during megaevents.
Multimedia data brings the
command centre to ocers’ hands and
acts as the centre’s eyes and ears.”
DAMM’s Pozzati says customers
like the radio’s user assignment (RUA)
function, which requires a login and
password for the user to access the
device and which provides a particular
prole for each subscriber. He also
cites driver-behaviour-monitoring
apps and vehicle telemetry for fuel
optimisation, and geofencing alarms
around miningvehicles.
GPS location-based apps are
problematic in some ways. Gallart cites
a proof-of-concept trial conducted
in 2018 in Mexico to implement
the Airbus Tactilon Agnet. MCPTT
and MCVideo proved popular, but
there was a reluctance to use MC
geopositioning. e reason was that
providing the location of ocers in the
eld could potentially be dangerous if
this were to fall into the wrong hands.
“Some police institutions have been
inltrated by gang members, so if
you identify who and where everyone
is, the bad guys could potentially
see where the good guys are! It was a
rude awakening. So, the geolocation
solution stays in the command and
control centres and is not distributed to
every ocer in the eld,” says Gallart.
All the vendors spoken to are
optimistic, with the likes of Motorola
moving more into services. “Despite
being only a small chunk of the
world market, it is a very steady one,”
explains Fernandez Feito.
Underdeveloped areas are controlled
by criminal gangs, where the police
are unable to go, so you cannot
install the infrastructure
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