Analysys Mason: TETRA at 15: still a strong contender for public safety

When the ETSI TETRA standard was published as an open and publically available specification for professional mobile radio (PMR) users, pundits anticipated that within a few years Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) would replace it as the technology of choice for many government agencies, emergency services (police, fire, ambulance), rail transportation staff, and transport services in about seven to ten years. Fifteen years later, and not only has this not happened, but the latest technologies - such as WiMAX, LTE, 4G and DMR - may also struggle as the way forward for public safety solutions.

Emergency services require a reliable, robust solution that provides good coverage, secure access and instant group voice call setup. The TETRA standard was specifically designed to meet these primary needs and dedicated systems are easily engineered to provide the robust and high user access availability required. Recently, mobile data services have permitted improvements in operational efficiency, which has been the driver for the publication of TETRA 2 - including TETRA Enhanced Data Service (TEDS), which offers a combination of different data throughput speeds at various channel bandwidths/modulation schemes,

Initially, one of the main threats to TETRA came from TETRAPOL. As a ‘publically available specification’ it, like TETRA, was open for support from multiple vendors. But, in reality, certain key radio components were effectively sourced from a single supplier, which raised questions about the true openness of the technology, and many users eventually opted for TETRA as a true open standard which embraces a regime of interoperability testing between manufacturers to ensure correct operation.

Source: www.analysysmason.com

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