Austrian State can not Afford to Implement TETRA

In an interview with an Austrian newspaper, Andreas Schäfer Meier, spokesman for Governor Peter Kaiser, who is known to be responsible for the civil protection, says: "The financial situation of the province of Carinthia should be clear. For a switch to digital radio Carinthia currently has simply no money," 

The decision to switch to digital radio to support police, fire and rescue organizations, made by the Ministry of Interior, was made long time ago and just like any other EU country, Austria also planned switch over from analogue emergency communications to "TETRA DigitalFunk".

The introduction of TETRA in the state of Carinthia would cost about 25 million Euro and the cost for operating the system would cost more than a million Euro per year.

In states like Vienna, Lower Austria and Tyrol, the digital radio network is already in operation. In other states, the emergency communication system is 'already' in the planning phase.

According to Red Cross chief Peter Anbrozy: "The time of the voice transmission is over. There are no new frequencies left anymore. In addition, data volumes are increasing. This is barely supported by the analog network."

One of the major challenges is that there are hardly any spare parts for the "age-old system" left. In addition the old analogue system is vulnerable for interference and in some areas it happened before that police is not able to communicate.  

The rollout of the TETRA network started in the state of Tyrol in 2006. It now seems that after 10 years, the Austrian TETRA network has still not been completed. Where other countries are already planning to implement LTE to support their critical communications, it seems like Austria has a long way to go to gain from the benefits of a modern communications system for police, fire and ambulance services.