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Ross Macindoe, of Airwave Solutions, operator of a TETRA public safety network in the UK, said: “Someone was talking about TEDS being a software [upgrade]. For us, that is not the case: it is a hardware replacement. So the level of investment required to replace nearly 4000 base stations is just not going to happen, for that level of increase in data performance. Our customers are looking for a step change. They are not looking for a small change.” Also from the audience came a personal view from someone at a radio company: “It looks to me that people on the panel are not listening to the customers. They are still trying to push an infrastructure when the customer doesn’t want an infrastructure. The point is that we are facing a new climate, there is austerity everywhere.” For such users, he said, the investment in TEDS was too heavy compared to the return. But Jeppe Jepsen, of Motorola Solutions, said: “Nothing is black and white. I think the future will be a combination of everything that we’ve spoken about here. Nobody can expect that you can build out LTE with the coverage that you have on TETRA today. So TETRA will stay. TEDS will come into the new deployments, and on broadband it will be a combination of private broadband and commercial use. And it will be this multitechnology that will be the solution for everybody. TEDS is not dead.” Hans Borgonjen, chairman of Europe’s Public Safety Radiocommunication Group and vice-chairman of the TCCA, said: “Sometimes TEDS will be in the mix, sometimes TEDS will not be in the mix. But always in the mix is the use of commercial networks.... So the big question is, what do we do with those applications which are really mission-critical where we cannot take any risk that they will not work?” One solution could be pre-emption – a network feature which allows high-priority users to displace less important users from the channel. But it emerged that this function may not work reliably during periods when the network is exceptionally busy. “Pre-emption only works if you are heard”, explained Ross Macindoe. “If you can’t get on to the site in the first place, then you can’t get pre-emption, you can’t be given priority.” And he added: “Public networks are perfectly suitable for public safety 99·999 per cent of the time? It’s what price and what value you put on the other 0·001 per cent. And if you can’t get through because the access channel is too full, you’ve paid for nothing, because that’s when you need it.” Bringing the discussion to a close, Phil Godfrey addressed the manufacturers present. “If we assume that there is a demand for some form of a standardized mobile broadband solution for mission critical users, are you guys capable of coming to some form of consensus and working together to achieve a common solution?” “My answer is clearly yes because I’m a taxpayer and I am living in Europe. I enjoy security and safety, so I want to have this safety also in future”, said Pedro Schmid, of Nokia Siemens Networks. “It’s a little bit more difficult to answer as a company because, of course, each of us is here to make business. And if it comes to money, of course then it’s more difficult to come to common agreements in the industry.” Francesco Pasquale, of Selex Elsag said: “I am convinced that a common solution can be found, an agreement could be found. My confidence comes from more than 10 years of experience within this association. I have seen several times discussion starting from quite different views and positions, especially at the beginning where the fundamental questions about TETRA technology, for example, were being posed. But in the end we always managed to find common solution.” Standard solutions Day Two of the workshop focused on the standards-making process and on finding a way forward. With Phil Kidner, chief executive of the TETRA Association, in the chair, a view of initiatives in Europe was presented by Hans Borgonjen, who is (among other roles) a radiocommunications expert with the EU’s Law Enforcement Working Party. With photographic flashbacks to a series of disasters, from football stadium catastrophes, terrorist incidents and an air crash to natural events such as earthquakes, Mr Borgonjen reminded his listeners that any public mobile network can become overloaded within moments as users begin dialling out. “And that has been happening, unfortunately, more often than we realize”, he said. “At times of major incidents, the commercial networks become overloaded, less reliable and that is unfortunately the moment when you need it the most. “In 99 per cent of cases, commercial networks will work and we can use them perfectly – but in just that 1 per cent, or even less than 1 per cent, where you need it the most, where it should be 200 per cent or 300 per cent reliable, exactly at that moment the commercial infrastructures are at their lowest point of resilience. And that is the problem we have to solve.”
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