News
UK seeks to replace TETRA with LTE as early as 2016
WESTMINSTER, Colo.—Within the next three years, LTE could replace the TETRA system that currently provides mission-critical communications for public-safety agencies and other government organizations in Great Britain, an official said yesterday.
Since 2005, mission-critical communications have been transmitted over the Airwave system—a privately owned TETRA network that covers 99% of the land mass and 98% of the population in Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales). It serves “all three emergency services and other national users” that pay subscriptions fees, according to Gordon Shipley of the United Kingdom Home Office. Although the performance of the TETRA system is “very good,” it is “extremely expensive” for users, particularly when compared to the plummeting per-minute costs of commercial wireless air time, he said.
In addition, the contracts associated with the Airwave system are scheduled to expire from 2016 to 2020, so the UK Home Office is looking for alternatives, Shipley said.
“Because [the Airwave network is] a TETRA-based system, it’s narrowband data,” Shipley said during the session. “One of the things which has become clear is that the emergency services are now increasingly going broadband services, which can provide even higher speeds. And we need to provide a better, more reliable and secure service for broadband, as well as narrowband voice. So, my program’s responsibility is to find a replacement for critical voice, as well broadband data services, and to do so cost effectively.
“We think, in the UK, that 4G LTE promises significant benefits over the current service that we buy.”
UK officials will conduct a supplier conference next month to get input on the notion of having a public-safety LTE system operational in December 2016, with the entire system transitioned to the 4G technology by 2020, Shipley said.
This development could have an impact in the United States, which is trying to get 3GPP—the global standards body for LTE—to include public-safety requirements such as mission-critical voice in future revisions of LTE that can be implemented in the nationwide broadband network being built by FirstNet, according to Andrew Thiessen, who helps lead the standards effort for Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR), a unit of the U.S. Dept. of Commerce.
“I think it’s imperative that everyone in the audience understand that the United States isn’t the only country that’s actually looking forward to LTE,” Thiessen said during the session. “In many ways, the United Kingdom is actually working faster than FirstNet, looking at a 2016 date for mission-critical voice.”
Of course, one of the key requirements for public safety is mission-critical, push-to-talk voice. A draft set of requirements for push-to-talk over LTE has been distributed to officials in other countries, and the initial response has been positive, Thiessen said.
“We’re actually getting pretty close,” he said. “The comments that we’re getting back are more about clarification of what a particular sentence meant and less so about, ‘Well, we view things very differently.’ Public safety operates fairly similar globally, so push to talk is push to talk, whether it’s TETRA or P25 or whether it’s the United Kingdom or the United States—the expectations of the user community are very similar.”
When they have their first
When they have their first national emergency and the LTE system is overloaded they’ll wonder what happened. Just a guess.
The article appears to
The article appears to oversimplify matters somewhat. It is not just push to talk that is challenging LTE vendors. At the features level the system will also need to effectively deliver group calls (an essential feature of PS LMR for blue light agency and inter agency co-ordination at incidents) and high priority emergency calls. Although these are likely not be insurmountable they do not seem to be available yet. At the system level many users place high value on the local site trunking feature available in Tetra and there is no LTE equivalent of this to my knowledge. individual and group call encryption is likely to be a major challenge also. A further issue is resilience. Commercial LTE is unlikely to have the levels of resilience available in the Airwave network. Although vendors will most likely overcome the features and security issues it would seem inevitable that government will need to find the budget to realise a fully resilient LTE network at least as far as dominant sites providing resilient coverage equivalent to that which Airwave currently provides.
Rather amazing that the UK
Rather amazing that the UK would consider dumping Airwave service after they had invested so heavily in developing the service. The procurement of the Airwave service took many years and the buildout even longer. One questions if 2016 is remotely possible given the state of Public Safety LTE development.
Whilst the voice facilities
Whilst the voice facilities in Airwave are pretty good the clue to the desire to replace may lie in the massive 2.8kbps data capability.
I just came back attending a
I just came back attending a conference on FirstNet Network (FNN). I totally agree that there are numerous challenges we will face in USA while creating the FNN. However, I have a strong conviction that we WILL make it happen in US. Challenging does not mean undoable. Tetra is certainly a very robust (and very expensive as well) system and it does the job. But that does not mean that we should not look into other technologies. 2016 is not unrealistic.
It is the a critical time for
It is the a critical time for critical comm. go to the high BW or stay at TETRA .
I think all the TETRA supporters will change their mind because it can not compete the LTE services.
The DMR and LTT close all the doors for TETRA (by simplicity low maintenance for DMR & High BW for LTE) so what is else for TETRA.
Well it seems that EE is down
Well it seems that EE is down across most of the country. Would you trust the mobile networks to run a mission critical system? Lives are at risk here, not the odd post to facebook.
Rather than focus on what
Rather than focus on what TETRA has and what LTE has not, what are the user requirements – and does the existing dinosaur support it? If not then time for a change for something better – which may or may not be LTE as we know it today.
Only the UK Government is
Only the UK Government is publicly promoting the move the LTE, but all the network companies are unable to provide mission critical voice and data until the mid 2025. LTE does not have emergency button or group wide area communications functionality necessary for the Police, Fire and Ambulance. There are lots of Chief Constables that do not recommend moving to LTE until the network manufactures and operators sign a contract to deliver the functionality they need. The Gov will not sign a contract until after the general election next May 2015. In addition, if elected the Labour party has stated that they would CANCEL the LTE project. Best solution for England, Scotland and Wales is for the Airwave TETRA operator to reduce their operating costs and keep TETRA for another 10 years. That’s what all the other European countries are doing.
At the moment LTE is a data network for data application and it will be years before mission critical functionality will be available to support our Police, Fire and Ambulance.
TETRA is the best solution for the next 10 years which will give LTE the time to mature and be a replacement it in 2020 to 2025.
LTE support QoS – Tetra does
LTE support QoS – Tetra does not
PTT and Group calls are supported
Emergency Management globally has a requirement to better serve their assets (people) and to do so, you need more than just voice – you need operational awareness.
Mobility has always been able to support Mission Critical – the carriers never implemented the functionality
A potential solution: A multi-cell approach: 400MHz for Emergency Management and 700MHz for public (for instance)
Tetra and LTE already integrate (Huawei is one example) and PTT works – creating a layered priority and policy.