Critical messaging
with more than 600 base stations
in the last two years. In Austria a
regionwide POCSAG paging network
is going to be implemented; four to six
departments (SDIS/regions) in France
are currently under construction; and
Swissphone has gained POCSAG
networks in North America over the
past 12 months. In the mentioned
countries and regions, the Ministries
of the Interiors have carried out several
studies confirming the value
of investing in POCSAG pager
networks for the next 10 to 15 years.
Otherwise they would not have made
such a decision.”
One of the most interesting
controversies to emerge of late is around
that most loved of British institutions,
the National Health Service (NHS).
Back in February, health and social
care secretary Matt Hancock referred
to pagers as being “outdated” and
“archaic”, and according to the BBC
described email and mobile phones
as being a “more secure, quicker and
cheaper way to communicate”, and
has ordered pagers’ removal for nonemergency
communications by the end
of 2021. In addition, smartphone-based
apps, which have similar functionality
to WhatsApp (but have been designed
to meet the requirements of medical
professionals), such as Medic Bleep
and Forward, are gaining in popularity
and claim to offer impressive savings.
For example, a study by the Kent
Surrey Sussex Academic Health Science
Network found that Forward could
save a Trust £922m a year in cash and
non-cash savings, while Forward’s own
research indicates that the app can save
doctors 43 minutes per shift through
reduced use of other communication
methods, including paper.
However, it seems that Hancock
and his advisors may not have been
adequately briefed on modern
paging technologies, given that his
department’s announcement incorrectly
claimed that pagers offer only one-way
communications. The announcement
is also less cut and dried than it might
first appear as it also says that “NHS
trusts will be allowed to keep some
pagers for emergency situations,
such as when Wi-Fi fails or when
other forms of communication are
unavailable”. This doesn’t give a key
point justice – the resilience that pagers
can offer. For example, PageOne, the
provider of paging services to the NHS
(and which has a long-standing and
recently expanded partnership with
Swissphone), offers a two-way Triple
Resilience paging service that works
over GSM, a wide-area network and
onsite coverage, and the company also
supports multi-channel messaging
which combines paging with alerting
via SMS text message, smart app, voice
and email.
Despite this furore, Hull says
Swissphone has “been fortunate to win
several prestigious projects in healthcare
recently, particularly in the NHS in the
UK. These networks are designed to
deliver high-speed emergency voice and
data messages to assist medical teams to
respond to emergencies as quickly
as possible.”
In addition, he says: “We see that
paging will continue to play a vital
part in the overall communications
strategy of most hospitals. We have
also achieved further milestones in the
area of public safety: Saarland is the
first German federal state to use the
s.ONE resource management solution
for the feedback, encryption and
remote programming of its terminals.
Furthermore, the State of Lower
Austria is currently upgrading its alarm
network to the latest Swissphone radio
network generation. Swissphone is most
successful with projects where a core of
mission-critical users need to be reached
even if all third-party infrastructure
is down (cellular networks, internet,
power). We provide the channels
to deliver these messages (paging,
messaging-gateway) along with the
middleware solution that manages these
alerts (I.SEARCH, s.GUARD).”
It is also worth noting that there is
nothing stopping pagers from being
used in combination with the latest
wireless protocols, as demonstrated
by Swissphone’s decision to release
the RES.Q LTE pager, which uses
LTE-M and NB-IoT for its feedback
channel and hybrid alerting, in
combination with POCSAG, and
Hull highlights the advantages of
using LTE-M and NB-IoT over LoRa
and Sigfox, given that the former use
licensed frequencies as opposed to
licence-exempt, and use SIM cards
to establish connections, which offers
greater security.
We have covered a lot of ground,
going from the technology to alert
whole populations during disasters
to that used to allow organisations
to better cope with emergencies be
they big or small, along with the use
of pagers to reach first-responders
and medical personnel. While news
coverage of hurricanes, riots and
other incidents have made us all too
aware of the sheer power of nature
and the hazards that we have to
navigate in this uncertain age, it is
reassuring to know just how much help
is on hand from both new and triedand
tested technology.
The use of
pagers in the
NHS has recently
come under
fire from some
quarters, but
while mobile
apps are gaining
ground pagers
offer superior
resilience
October 2019 @CritCommsToday 13
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