Cassidian has been awarded the first contract for paging within the new German public safety authorities’ digital radio network (BOSNet). The company signed a contract with the Hessian Ministry of the Interior and Sport to develop and supply a pocket-size TETRA pager for German Security Authorities and Organizations (BOS) in the state of Hessen. The TETRA pager will be the first product of this kind on the market which fully complies with the respective interoperability requirements for the digital radio network of the German Federal Agency for Digital Radio of Security Authorities and Organizations (BDBOS). Pager deliveries will start at the end of 2014.

More than 50,000 professional and volunteer firefighters and other rescue and relief forces in Hessen will be equipped with the new terminal. The pager fully meets the standardised technical requirements of German BOS regarding alerts and security. It allows corresponding control centres to inform dedicated operational units in case of an emergency. 

In addition to the terminal device, Cassidian will also provide its Taqto intelligent terminal management solution. Taqto will act as a terminal asset management system and will enable the BOS organizations involved to keep a record of all devices in the field, including their parameter configurations. Furthermore, Taqto supports remote firmware updates to the pager via the Internet through secured connections and will thus significantly facilitate the administration of the pager fleet in the field.

The pager frame contract is the first contract of this kind for alerting resources via the German BOSNet. It enables new services and advanced tactical communication to be introduced to the BOS organisations in the state of Hessen.

“We are pleased to have been awarded this contract in Hessen”, said Markus Kolland, head of Cassidian Communications. “It is a further testimonial from our customers of Cassidian’s experience and expertise in TETRA technology. We look forward to offering a brand new product on the market that can help to gain time and save lives in the most critical emergency situations.”

• Cassidian’s concentrator solution and RCS 9500 control room workstation have also passed all interoperability tests and have both been certified by the BDBOS.  “With a digital connector, the BOS user organization can avoid unnecessary costs for various technologies for connecting to the BOS digital radio. Control rooms from different providers can thus be connected more economically to the network”, explained Markus Kolland. “The functionality of Cassidian’s digital connector interface has been adapted to the latest IP-based control room systems, thus optimizing the time and effort required for implementation and enabling the control rooms to operate more quickly on the BOS digital radio. Furthermore, using our concentrator reduces the time and effort required to certify both first installations and changes to the workstations that are connected.”