First North American TETRA customer network now live
The BC Hydro TETRA network consists of fifteen site base stations operating in UHF 400 MHz frequencies, one mast-mounted base station, two redundant, geographically-diverse switches, a five-console PowerTrunk CeCoCo® CAD system and 325 subscribers.
Following a successful trial and contract award, the S.M. Group International, Inc. (SMi), a prominent Canadian engineering firm, and PowerTrunk, Inc., the North American subsidiary of Teltronic S.A.U., a major global TETRA vendor, engineered, supplied, installed and commissioned a 16-site TETRA network in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia for BC Hydro, the third largest electrical utility in Canada.
In May, the network went live and successfully passed provisional acceptance becoming North America’s first ever operational TETRA network and is to be used by different departments of BC Hydro. This pioneering project is the first of its kind in North America after more than a decade of unsuccessful attempts to introduce TETRA technology in Canada and the United States owing to a variety of regulatory barriers in connection with emission requirements and occupied bandwidth limitations.
PowerTrunk’s early implementations in 2009 and 2010 allowed getting through Industry Canada’s type acceptance procedures by way of a slight modification of the TETRA modulation. In 2011 supported by the TETRA + Critical Communications Association and PowerTrunk, the Canadian regulatory authority changed its RSS-119 rules to accept the TETRA standard in all of the traditional land mobile radio frequency bands.
The BC Hydro TETRA network consists of fifteen site base stations operating in UHF 400 MHz frequencies, one mast-mounted base station, two redundant, geographically-diverse switches, a five-console PowerTrunk CeCoCo® CAD system and 325 subscribers. Additional sites, consoles and subscribers will be added in the near future. In addition, the TETRA network was designed to interoperate with BC Hydro’s PABX and control centre as well as with its VHF legacy radio system in a fully integrated manner. TETRA’s superior speech quality, encryption capabilities, full and half-duplex private calls, group calls, text messaging and other voice and data services are intended to significantly enhance BC Hydro’s operating capability in the Vancouver region.
BC Hydro operates and maintains a power system infrastructure that serves more than 1.8 million customers in an area including over 95 percent of British Columbia's population. For the efficient and safe execution of fieldwork during normal and emergency operating conditions, BC Hydro crews require reliable and convenient mobile voice communications at all substations, dams, and generating stations, and along all distribution and transmission lines. Although the main requirement is for voice, BC Hydro will also use the mobile communications system for data applications such as short data and text messaging.
“This project is the outcome from the combined efforts of enthusiastic companies, institutions and individuals. PowerTrunk is honored for having contributed to demonstrate that TETRA, the most widely deployed digital land mobile radio technology in the world, is possible in North America,” affirmed Jose Martin, CEO for PowerTrunk.
“SMi is very pleased to add BCH to its list of satisfied Canadian Utility customers along with Hydro Quebec, Hydro One and others. SMi is committed to working closely with BCH and PowerTrunk to maintain the high quality of their TETRA radio system,” said M. Bernard Poulin, President and CEO of SMi.
Source: Powertrunk
