Best Use of TETRA for Public Safety sponsored by Motorola

Tom Quirke of Motorola was invited to the stage to present the next award. He revealed that Airwave had been nominated twice, for both its Airwave network and its Insite product, a web-based management and reporting solution. 

Also nominated was Shanghai 3G for its Shanghai Police TETRA system – but the top award went to the Airwave Network.

This UK system is the world’s largest TETRA network, spanning all but one per cent of the landmass of Great Britain and providing voice and data services to 300 000 users. During the past year, it handled major events such as a Royal Wedding and last year’s London riots and will be key to the massive security operation needed for this summer’s Olympic Games.

“We are delighted to receive this award, which is the ultimate recognition of our commitment to service excellence”, said chief executive Richard Bobbett. “Airwave is widely respected in the industry for its performance, products and services. The network is in use every day by over 250 agencies, which include all of Great Britain’s emergency services and a range of public service organisations.”

One judge summed up the network with the words: “This is TETRA.”

Best TETRA Innovation sponsored by Sepura

The next award gathered the most shortlisted entries on the night. Seven innovations made it to the final and Gordon Watling, CEO of Sepura, was invited to the stage to announce the winner.

APD Communications and Piciorgros both received high commendations before the winner was revealed as Hong Kong Police, for its business-model based innovation.

The Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) is one of the largest city forces in the world, on a par with the London Metropolitan Police Service and the New York Police Department. It handles over 6,000 emergency calls a day and manages to keep its pledge of a nine-minute response time.

HKPF has utilised a public-private partnership to raise significant funds to drive police radio coverage into buildings. The judges’ comments included: “Excellent example of innovative financing to ensure the HKPF stays on top of its game.”

Jolly Wong, chief police telecommunications engineer at the HKPF, came forward to accept the prize. He was also a member of the judging panel but it was stressed he had not been involved in the judging of this category.

Green TETRA Award

In the final category of the night, the judges were looking for demonstrable evidence that green thinking had been a major priority throughout the design, implementation and end use of the product or solution. 

The editor of TETRA Today, Richard Lambley, had the honour of presenting the award, which was a battle between Honoh, Motorola Solutions and Rohill.

Richard, who was also a member of the judging panel, remarked on the importance of finding green TETRA solutions before announcing Rohill as the winner. 

Rohill has developed a third-generation base station that is highly optimized in power consumption and temperature control. The result is a unit that has great potential to deliver savings in operating costs within large networks compared with conventional base stations, and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.

The judges described it as: “A worthwhile advance, one users everywhere could benefit from.”

Bert Bouwers, chief technology officer at Rohill, made his second trip of the night to the stage to accept the award. “We are very pleased to receive this award. It is a strong recognition of the ability of our R&D teams to turn innovation into excellent products”, he said. “Our partners and end-users of our solutions understand the advantages of the TetraNode soft switch based architecture, resulting in lower cost of ownership, which is ultimately proven by this award.”

‘Worthy winners’

As the evening drew to a close and everyone prepared to find their way back to hotels around the British capital, Phil Kidner, chief executive of the TCCA, was left to reflect on the evening’s highlights.  “I would like to thank everyone who supported the inaugural TETRA Awards and made the programme such a success”, he commented. “The standard of entries was extremely high – my congratulations to all the finalists, and of course to the worthy winners. 

“The awards presentation evening highlighted the innovation and dedication that has made TETRA the thriving technology that it is today, and provided an opportunity for TETRA advocates from around the world to celebrate excellence.”

Jon Benson, publisher of TETRA Today, added: “We offer congratulations to all our 2012 award winners. But meanwhile, we do not forget the contribution of the many other entrants in this competition, who are playing their part too in building the future of TETRA. 
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