Zetron demonstrates text-to-911, location-services capabilities

​Mission-critical control-room solutions provider Zetron demonstrated its ability to support native text-to-911 communications and location services integrated with Tait Communications’ DMR Tier 3 radio system during IWCE 2016 last month in Las Vegas.

Zetron is beginning to see momentum in the text-to-911 space, particularly in the states of Iowa, Tennessee and Washington, according to Gary Stidham, Zetron’s vice president of product management. Zetron’s text-to-911 solution is a new feature that will be added to the company’s MAX Call-Taking solution and requires that the public-safety answering point (PSAP) be connected to an Emergency Services IP network (ESInet), he said.

“It will be a licensed feature, and there will be a server component, as well,” Stidham said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications.

In addition, Zetron demonstrated its new DMR Tier III-based location-services solution integrated with partner Tait Communications. The new feature is part of Zetron’s MAX Dispatch system.

“We see the value of this in allowing the dispatcher to be more situationally aware of where resources are in the field—both vehicles and remote resources—to track them and communicate with them in a much easier fashion,” Stidham said. “This is just one of many things that will be coming to our product solution set around the map-based technology.”

Randy Richmond, a product manager for Zetron, said that existing MAX Dispatch customers would be able to implement the location-services solution with little additional hardware.

“As far as existing systems, they can get a software upgrade to add it, but they would have to add a location-services server for that,” Richmond said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications.

Users also would need to obtain a mapping service, but some of the options supported by Zetron are free, Richmond said.

Although DMR Tier III is a standard protocol, Zetron officials recognize that the interface includes enough flexibility that the company may have to make some adjustments with other manufacturers, according to Stidham. Zetron’s planning roadmap includes developing a version of the solution that works with DMR Tier II systems, he said.