Richard Lambley reports from Rio de Janeiro for TETRA TODAY
I came away with a memory-stick full of pictures of a multi-agency invasion of one such area, when the authorities swept in with massive force, including armoured cars and helicopters.
The 2016 Olympic Games, the 2014 FIFA World Cup, the 2012 Eco Summit -- there's a whole string of reasons for visiting Rio de Janeiro, and that's without even mentioning the spectacular Sugar Loaf Mountain, Copacabana and Ipanema beaches and the famous Rio Carnival. But when I flew there in August for TETRA TODAY, a quarterly magazine about radio communications from A&D Media, it was to write about radiocommunications systems.
TETRA is the radio technology underlying Britain's Airwave network, which supports the police and the other emergency services -- you can see its three-pronged aerials on lattice towers all over the land. But like the mobile phone in your pocket, it's a European-developed technology that is succeeding globally. Part of TETRA TODAY's role is to provide the information that will help push that growth around the world.
In August it's winter in Brazil (or as close as it gets to winter), though I did manage a swim in the South Atlantic beneath a cloudy sky, on the one day when the breakers weren't seriously higher than I am. So the beaches weren't too much of a distraction from the work to be done, which was to write up three TETRA system users in the area: a large steelworks which is one of the power-plants driving the booming Brazilian economy; the commuter railway network that serves the Rio region; and the Rio police.
As in the UK, the police network provides secure communications for a whole range of user organisations -- from civil defence forces, the emergency medical service, the fire brigade and the prisons service to the various bodies with responsibility for crime-fighting and public order.
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Source: www.tetratoday.com
