8
News
Ericsson’s critical
communications portfolio
www.criticalcomms.com March 2019
Finnish and Swedish
networks connect
The rst call took place between Finland
and Sweden’s nationwide public safety
networks (Virve and Rakel respectively)
on 7 February, demonstrating the new ability
of their rst-responders to retain access
to critical communications when
roaming across the Finnish-
Swedish border.
e call was made
as part of a ceremony
that took place as
a videoconference
between Stockholm,
Sweden and Espoo,
Finland. Police ocers
in both countries will
share a channel on the
two networks, which
have been linked using
TETRA’s standardised Inter-
System Interface (ISI) functionality.
is operational capability is important along
the 614km of land border between the two
countries as it will allow their emergency
response centres, police, healthcare and rescue
services, customs, defence forces and border
guard to communicate securely and reliably.
Previously, Virve’s network coverage has not
reached very far across the border, but using ISI,
Finnish Virve TETRA terminals can now be
used to make calls anywhere that is covered
by Rakel. Similarly, Swedish ocials can
now make calls anywhere in Finland and use
Ericsson has launched its critical
communications broadband portfolio for
mobile operators to help them meet the
business- and mission-critical needs of
industrial and public safety customers.
The portfolio, which Ericsson states
is 3GPP Release 13-compliant (and
meets 3GPP Releases 14 and 15 for
some functionality), comprises three
offerings: critical network capabilities;
critical broadband applications; and
exible deployments for both local private
networks and nationwide mission-critical
LTE networks.
The rst of these encompasses what
the company describes as advanced
features for critical network performance,
covering: high network availability; multinetwork
operation with spectrum sharing
techniques; coverage and capacity for
critical applications; network security
capabilities to ensure that network
services are maintained even when
infrastructure is under attack; features
to simplify the roll-out of broadcasting
services, including the use of Evolved
Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services
(eMBMS); and deployable systems to
allow temporary coverage for disaster
recovery and operations in rural areas
without existingcoverage.
Importantly for public safety use it
also features quality of service, priority
and preemption to guarantee latency
performance and capacity requirements
duringhigh load and congestion, and
the ability for mobile broadband radio
access sites to operate in fallback mode
via Isolated E-UTRAN operation for
public safety (IOPS), should the network
connection/backhaul to the core network
fail. This feature has limited availability
until the end of 2019.
The critical broadband applications
offering covers Ericsson Group-Radio,
which provides mission-critical push-totalk,
data and video services, while its
exible deployments for private networks
range from network slicing to fully
dedicated networks, and the company
claims these will enable service providers
to offer scalable, critical broadband
network solutions and services for
criticalindustries.
their terminals in the Finnish Virve network.
A similar approach was used to link Finland’s
Virve network with the Norwegian equivalent,
Nødnett, in November 2018, and Rakel
and Nødnett in 2016/2017 (trials began
in November 2016, with full
operational use following soon
afterwards). As Rakel and
Virve were supplied by
Airbus, and Nødnett by
Motorola Solutions,
both vendors had to
work with each other
and their respective
clients. Calls by public
safety authorities are
now possible between the
Virve and Rakel networks,
between the Virve and
Adobe Stock/Maksim Kabakou
Nødnett networks and between
the Rakel and Nødnett networks. e
next step is to enhance simultaneous shared
group calling between all three networks.
“e owners of the Virve and Rakel networks
have agreed on the rules for co-operation and
details concerning maintenance, the division of
costs and other practical issues. e authorities
using the service agree on the use of the system,
communication groups, procedures and
responsibilities; in other words, who and which
team to call on the other side of the border,”
said Jarmo Vinkvist, COO, Virve services, State
Security Networks Group Finland.
Motorola’s sales up
15% in 2018 and 4Q18
Motorola Solutions saw a 15 per cent
increase in revenue in both 2018
(YoY) and 4Q18 (from 4Q17),
supported by growth in the Americas and
EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region.
Organic growth (which excludes acquisitions
and an accounting change) was up by six per
cent for both periods.
e full-year results were also supported
by 13 and 20 per cent increases in sales from
its products and systems and services and
software activities, which rose to $5.1bn and
$2.2bn respectively. Full-year revenue for
2018 amounted to $7.3bn, of which $2.3bn
was generated in the fourth quarter. Motorola
Solutions achieved a gross margin of $3.48bn in
2018 and operating earnings of $1.25bn. GAAP
operating margin was 17.1 per cent of sales,
compared with 20.1 per cent in the prior year.
e company saw the value of its backlog
grow by nearly $1bn (10 per cent) in 2018 to
$10.6bn, and in the same year it signed the UK
Airwave extension contract through to the end
of 2022 for $1.1bn.
Motorola Solutions expects to see 11 per
cent revenue growth in 1Q19 (compared with
1Q18) and six to seven per cent revenue growth
for 2019 as a whole.
/www.criticalcomms.com