Airwave
What is Airwave ?
The Airwave service is a digital radio communications network
designed to meet the needs of the police and other public safety
organisations. It is a digital mobile radio service, developed and
managed by mmO 2 to provide a secure, powerful and flexible
communications network.
The contract to provide the Airwave service was awarded to mmO
2 in February 2000 by the Police Information Technology
Organisation ( PITO ), on behalf of the Home Office. The service is
based on the European open standard TETRA .
TETRA
TETRA is short for TErrestrial Trunked RAdio, an open European
Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) standard for digital
trunked radio.
The Home Office chose TETRA as the standard for Airwave,
deriving the following benefits:
As an open standard, TETRA allows true interoperability
between geographically and operationally diverse sets of
users.
It also created a highly competitive market for terminal
equipment, bringing associated benefits for end users.
The TETRA system is already proven in the field, with a large
customer base across Europe, including Finland , Germany and
Holland .
The standard expects to be supporting between five and ten
million users by 2010.
TETRA is the only open Digital Trunked Radio standard approved
by the European Telecommunications Standard Agency .
The TETRA standard offers manufacturers and operators
significant economies of scale, providing a much wider choice for
customers on both infrastructure and terminals.
The TETRA standard is supported by more than sixty suppliers
in fourteen countries, and is rapidly becoming accepted as a world
standard.
Airwave
- The Airwave network is based on
TETRA
- It caters for speech, data and image
communications on the same infrastructure. The radio network
operates on the 380MHz to 400MHz band.
- All the radio sites are connected via an
extensive ground based network, using Kilostream links.
- mmO2 , as the service provider, procures,
installs, maintains and manages the entire network via a number of
network and service centres.
Why Change to Airwave?
During 2005/6, the Government will withdraw all of the
existing VHF radio frequencies used by the emergency services in
the United Kingdom ; therefore the emergency services have to
migrate to alternative systems before the VHF frequencies are fully
withdrawn. However, Airwave is not merely a replacement for the old
analogue system, it provides a range of new services, which the
previous systems could not deliver.
Airwave is a private
mobile radio communications service, intended for all public safety
organisations in Scotland , England and Wales . It brings important
new opportunities to the police service, replacing conventional
analogue radios with secure mobile digital radio terminals
allowing, fast transfer of information and images between
patrolling officers and their stations.
The Benefits of Airwave
Airwave has been designed to enable the police and public
safety organisations to deliver a more effective service to the
community. It allows:
- Access to local and national databases
leading to better and faster provision of information to
Officers.
- Secure communications, contributing to
combating crime and safeguarding information from unauthorised
access (analogue scanners operated by some criminals, will not be
able to listen into police radio traffic).
- Digital voice quality, reducing any
possible misunderstandings in messages.
- One terminal acting as a radio, mobile
telephone and data terminal leading to time savings (certain
facilities are generally available to all users but the system is
tailored to suit the Forces needs).
- Automatic Vehicle and Person location
leading to quicker responses, more efficient use of resources and
improved Officer Safety.
- Comprehensive Management Information
enabling the best management of our limited operational
resources.
- Interoperability providing seamless
voice, data and image communications, across the country and across
organisational & geographical boundaries.
National services such as British Transport Police and the
Scottish Drugs Enforcement Agency require to operate throughout the
country and previously did not have access to a secure, modern
communications system, which can operate nationally and integrate
with local Forces.
The emergency services response to Major incidents - such as
the Clapham Junction train crash, Lockerbie, and the London
Underground bombings were known to have been hampered by a lack of
adequate communication. Airwave has been designed to eliminate such
interoperability problems.