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But the solution taking shape is not a completely new standard. “The idea is to base it as maximum as possible on existing LTE, to have it as close as possible, maybe 99 per cent similar to what is going to be used in the future for commercial use – because the more it is aligned with commercial use, the better it is for our relatively small niche market.” Already change was in the air: apps were coming, for the police and specifically PPDR, and would have to be supported. “This is going to be a completely new world of what we have to face”, Mr Borgonjen said. “My personal opinion is that this new development has to be a very important part of what we are going to do within the TCCA. That also means that those players should be in the TCCA, so we should have apps developers in the Critical Communication Group.” He ended: “There is not one golden alleluia wonderful technology which can solve everything.” Asked to guess when suitable frequencies might be available for new systems, Mr Borgonjen said: “The most important thing is where will we get it. When we have to free up complete spectrum and re-farm and things like that, it will take years and years and years.” But he added: “I have not said it, but yesterday somebody else said it: why not look into NATO spectrum? I’ve not said it! But that can be much sooner.” Power trips While several of the presentations focused on public protection, the needs of other users with critical broadband communications requirements were aired too. Adrian Grilli, of the European Utility Telecom Council, showed how fast, low-latency data communication would become a vital mechanism for managing today’s increasingly complex electricity distribution networks. Sensors monitoring the supply could often detect small disturbances during the milliseconds before the onset of a fault – and if a faulty network element could be instantly switched out and isolated, it should be possible to avoid the cascade failures which have periodically blacked out entire states and countries. One such blackout in August 2003, affecting the eastern seaboard of the US and Canada, was estimated to have cost $7–10 billion in economic damage. In this two-day incident, 50 million people lost their supply and the consequences included deaths, thousands of fires, arrests for looting, cancelled airline flights and the failure of all cellular networks. “Everything depends on electricity”, Mr Grilli emphasized. “Your police, your fire, your ambulances, your financial services your food, your fuel, your water.” To meet regulatory targets in Europe, the electricity industry will now have to put much more communication into its networks during the coming 10–15 years, for initiatives such as smart metering. “We think we need only about 2 Mbit/s bandwidth maximum, possibly less, and capable of supporting a distributed architecture”, he said. “And that’s where my problem comes: can LTE support a distributed architecture?” After GSM-R From the transport industry came Chiel Spaans of the UIC, the International Railways Union, which sets technical standards for railway operation. “For railway communication we have only one worldwide standard”, he said. “It is not used everywhere but it is at least one standard. And that’s GSM-R. GSM-R was in fact slightly before TETRA, so that’s the reason why we chose GSM-R and not TETRA. “What we supply above normal GSM is group calls, broadcast calls, fast call setup, location-dependent, call features we need within the railways. Five priority levels, tested to 250 km/h but it works also at 500 km/h and so on. And of course we have, when needed, GPRS and EDGE. So our data communication needs at the moment are more or less possible with GPRS and EDGE.” But one day all this will come to an end, Mr Spaans said. “It can happen, due to the fact that the public operators stop GSM deployment somewhere in 2015–2018, that the industry cannot guarantee any longer the support and development of GSM and GSM-R. So at the moment we are already looking for solutions after GSM-R.” With needs such as real-time video surveillance looming, a broadband solution is needed, and already a preliminary user specification has been drafted. “Can we synchronize?”, Mr Spaans wondered. “I don’t say that we have to work together but at least we have to decide, based upon information, that we don’t work together. Or the other way round.” Creating a standard Lastly came a session devoted to efforts within ETSI. Brian Murgatroyd, chairman of ETSI TC TETRA, emphasized the value of achieving a standard. “Whereas a proprietary solution might be much faster getting to market, the market is going to be that much bigger, and that much more useful, if it’s standardized”, he said.
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