LTE  |  2021-10-26

Caltta Delivers Broadband Trunking Communications System to MOI of Zambia

Source: The Critical Communications Review | Gert Jan Wolf editor

Caltta Technologies, a leading provider of integrated professional trunking communication solutions, has recently delivered a leading broadband trunking system to the Ministry of Interior (MOI) of Zambia.

The system, as part of the government’s campaigns to modernize its ICT infrastructure, will be used by the police, immigration, prison, anti-drug, and anti-terrorist forces.

In 2018, the MOI of Zambia launched the "Zambia Safe City Project" to build a modern communications system for law enforcing forces. MOI needed a unified communication and command system to increase law enforcing efficiency of various departments and ultimately to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the communities.

After comparison of different technological solutions, Zambia MOI selected B-TrunC and Caltta was awarded as the broadband trunking communications system provider. After careful planning and meticulous survey, the B-TrunC network is deployed to cover the country capital, provincial capitals, large towns, and major traffic arteries. Caltta also provided various types of broadband trunking terminals for the police departments at all levels across the country. The system realized voice, multimedia, and data services such as trunking call, positioning, video/images transmission and unified command and dispatching. It effectively improved the efficiency of cross-departmental collaboration and the speed of emergency response. The air interface of the B-TrunC standard adopts innovative downlink shared channel technology, which greatly improves the spectrum efficiency of group communication services.

The "Safe City Project" adopted B-TrunC standard as the core technology. B-TrunC is a broadband trunking communications standard initiated by China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) and administrated by the B-TrunC Broadband Trunking Industry Alliance. In November 2012, China Communication Standards Association (CCSA) formally launched the B-TrunC standard. Recommended by ITU-R, B-TrunC became the Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) broadband trunking air interface standard in November 2014.

To ensure compatibility with broadband data services, B-TrunC has enhanced the trunking voice services and broadband trunking services such as multimedia communication and dispatching. Featuring flexible bandwidth, high spectrum efficiency, low latency, and high reliability, it meets the needs of professional users for trunking voice, broadband data, emergency command and dispatch, etc. Zambia MOI’s private network of B-TrunC operates on the 400 MHz TDD LTE frequency band and integrates video surveillance (VSS), video conference (VCS), emergency response (CERS), intelligent police E-Police and other systems. The B-TrunC system is the cornerstone of the entire “Safe City” project.

In addition to providing a unified private communications network, MOI’s private broadband system provides backhaul for VCS and E-Police. The system is connected to commercial mobile cellular networks.