Russia
10
New frontiers
Russia’s critical communications market is still moving from analogue to
digital, and the country’s oil and gas sector is embracing the use of drones.
Barry Mansfi eld takes a look at the state of play
www.criticalcomms.com November 2019
Despite the promise of
new technologies and the
complexities they pose,
TETRA itself still enjoys
a strong reputation in the
critical communications market in
Russia and surrounding states. One
reason is the country’s vast territory,
which means the context around any
discussion of mission-critical broadband
is markedly diff erent from that in its
smaller, more densely populated peers.
Although parts of Russia have had
LTE for some years now (Novosibirsk
in Siberia was the unlikely proving
ground for Megafon’s introduction
of 4G services back in April 2012),
many regions still lack LTE coverage
and much of the focus in the country’s
critical communications sector is on the
migration from analogue radio systems
to digital. In addition, wide-scale 5G
deployments aren’t expected in Russia
until the early 2020s.
With a view to a full commercial
5G launch in 2022, Megafon has
concentrated mostly on applications
within healthcare and transport. In
June, Huawei agreed with Russian
operator MTS to develop its 5G
network; this news came as the
Chinese telecoms giant was eff ectively
blacklisted by the US Commerce
Department. Our scene set, it’s worth
noting that TETRA’s appeal in the
region was recently evidenced by
services. Th is demonstrates another of
TETRA’s strengths – interoperability
between manufacturers’ products. In
some regions, terminals from four
manufacturers – Cleartone, Airbus
SLC, Motorola Solutions and Sepura –
are all in use on the same network.
Other recent projects include a
pilot for Russian Railways by Tele2
and Nokia to enable real-time videostreaming
at Luzhskaya station in the
Leningrad region – a technology that
paves the way for the remote operation
of locomotives. Radio Tel Saint
Petersburg is set to roll out its successful
TETRA system in more Russian cities
(it currently boasts a 99.9 per cent call
success rate on its 70-agency-strong
trunking network spanning police,
utilities, power plants and more),
having already secured licences for
Krasnodar, Tatarstan, Nizhni Novgorod
and the Primorye territory.
Move to mission-critical
Jaakko Etelaaho, a manager at Secure
Land Communications (SLC), a
Digitalisation is getting
more evident and with
MCPTT solutions we see the
user base expanding to
new sectors
Motorola Solutions’ 2018 deal to
expand a TETRA network in Georgia.
Back in Russia, another TETRA
success story is the 250-mile
Yekaterinburg railway line, which uses a
train application server to allow staff to
use train numbers as addresses instead
of traditional telephone numbers. A
direct line between the two exchanges
ensures the robustness of the system
in the event of a communications line
failing; an Advanced Confi guration and
Power Interface (ACAPI) allows highly
customisable applications to be added
to the radio system.
Besides TETRA, Russia is able to
draw upon some powerful standalone
solutions, including its renowned
GLONASS precision navigation
satellite system – which already allows
police, fi re and rescue teams to pinpoint
mobile users’ exact locations. More
recently this has been used to operate
an emergency call system called ERAGLONASS
(the Russian equivalent of
eCall) in partnership with Japanese fi rm
Denso Ten; it automatically dials an
emergency number after an accident,
notifying the control room of the
vehicle identifi cation number (VIN)
and location, while enabling two-way
communication.
In Moscow, a local network
from Leonardo (formerly Selex
Communications) has been used by
public safety and local government
/www.criticalcomms.com