Finland shares experience through cooperation at CCW 2016

TETRA has been excellent and will be used for many years – yet now is the time to prepare for the next generation said Esko Koskinen, Director General, Rescue Services in the Finnish Ministry of the Interior in his speech today at the opening of the Finnish pavilion at Critical Communications World.

It is the first time that Critical Communications World opens a country pavilion where manufacturers, developers and solution providers will be showcasing their solutions in one pavilion and so to strengthen each others business.

Koskinen in his speech, said today that he is very proud and honored to open up this first-ever user driven Finnish pavilion as part of Critical Communications World in Amsterdam.

He said: "We – Finnish authorities – have been able to find solutions to our field operational challenges and needs through co-operation amongst ourselves and with these industry partners. Now, we are here for you to see and experience at least a part of what has been done and what we are planning to do in the future. As we have gained so much through co-operation, we do not wish to keep our experiences and learnings secret, but to offer them instead to service the larger critical communications community."

The Finnish pavilion presents main user groups, operators and 14 industry partners from Finland that  all share the same vision of protecting citizens and society now and in the future.

Furthermore in his speech Koskinen said that TETRA has been excellent for mission critical communication between different users in day-to-day operations as well as in the exceptional situations. The present TETRA based solutions can and will be used still for many years, but it is crucial to prepare for the next generation. We need to make sure that we have robust, harmonized and 24/7 available mission critical communication solutions now and in the future.

Finland has a long history of excellent collaboration with different stakeholders in mission critical communication field and now it is important that to expand that collaboration even further as uncertainties and risks are increasing in the society and there is a need to tackle this challenge with even less resources than before.

Koskinnen continues: "To overcome this challenge we need to work together more effectively with more efficient critical solutions and together with neighboring countries like Sweden, Norway and Estonia. We need to handle domestic incidents, incidents along national borders and across the borders. This means we need to have excellent collaboration with domestic and foreign stakeholders going forward.

At the end of his speech, Koskinen said that he would like to challenge all of the visitors of the Finnish pavilion at the CCW exhibition and to ask for their view: "How can the critical communications industry move from highly-secure, robust and available narrowband solutions to broadband solutions without sacrificing any crucial aspects of mission critical communication?"