|
In Ireland, a national TETRA roll-out has recently been completed in record time, to general satisfaction among users. Richard Lambley visited Dublin to find how it was done When you’re building a new radio network, you can start out cautiously and then progressively expand and enhance your system. Or you can plunge in boldly and complete your build-out all at once, in a sustained, heroic engineering effort. For Ireland’s National Digital Radio Service (NDRS), a TETRA-based network for the public services, TETRA Ireland chose the latter course, completing its entire deployment in just two years. And opinion in Ireland, both at the company and among network users, is that this strategy has paid off. “Really, the crucial part of the success is that the coverage is so good”, comments Pat Kelly, chief executive of TETRA Ireland, at his headquarters in the Irish capital’s outskirts. “The NDRS has over 99·7 per cent geographic coverage – the best coverage of any mobile network in Ireland, including all the cellular.” Two large wall maps illustrate the comprehensive coverage of the Republic delivered by the system’s 600-plus radio sites, for mobile terminals and handportables respectively. White flecks denoting coverage gaps are few, and only in the remotest areas. “There are cellular blackspots in various parts of Ireland, especially in a place like Wicklow, a county that borders Dublin”, Mr Kelly adds, pointing to the map. “It’s a tough radio environment, but we know that the majority of GSM blackspots are covered by TETRA.” Though the network is still very new, anecdotes are accumulating about the benefits of the system. Mr Kelly cites a police incident in an apartment complex that occurred just a few kilometres away. “In Ballymun, North Dublin, two officers came under attack when answering a callout. They were able to react by hitting the emergency button on the top of the TETRA terminal, which alerted their base and within two minutes their colleagues were there to assist them.” A key advantage is the security of the network and its end-to-end encryption. The previous analogue networks were open, allowing messages to be intercepted easily by cheap scanner receivers. But with the completion of the last of the TETRA radio sites in the far North of Ireland (County Donegal) in October 2010, the police – the Garda Síochána in the Irish language – now enjoy a secure, nationwide service with high-quality voice and other communications services as the NDRS’s first user organization. Tender invitation The high specification for network quality was set in 2006 when the Department of Finance of the Irish Government invited tenders to supply a ‘build, own and operate’ TETRA network for the emergency services. The following January, ‘preferred bidder’ status was awarded to TETRA Ireland – a consortium which brought together Eircom (the former state-owned telecoms operator and still the country’s largest provider) with Motorola and the Irish PMR system integrator Sigma Communications Group. With the subsequent transformation from consortium to company, the three have become TETRA Ireland’s shareholders. As a next step, TETRA Ireland evaluated its TETRA technology using a 14-site pilot network in the north of Dublin, where the various user agencies were able to run test scenarios. The success of this trial led to the signing of a contract in June 2008. “Frequency licences were awarded in August 2008 and we commenced the build of the network in September 2008”, Pat Kelly continues. “We built it by region. Dublin, with the highest density population was completed first, bringing 7000 users on to the network. “TETRA went live in Dublin in June, 2009. The eastern part of the country followed after that, in August. In November and December 2009 we focused on the whole south area, moving south-east, west and concluding with the northern region. Full roll-out concluded with the final sites, in Donegal, in October last year. “Each time a region went live, we brought in Gardaí [the police] and prison services in that area immediately. It proved to be a very fast build, resulting in rapidly timed migration, which is probably different from other networks. We had the experience of other networks that didn’t go as quickly, and we obviously corrected some of those issues.” |