TETRA plus mobe?
TETRA is a good voice radio for the emergency services and the use of a second handset for data has been proven.
In the early days of the Airwave project we got hold of a commercial TETRA radio to get an early test. It even worked on the train down to London, when normal mobile phones lost coverage. Airwave TETRA is a good voice service that works well and has the required features. The single-press emergency button opens the mic and gives the radio interrupt priority back to the control room. So the officer wrestling a 20-stone mental patient quoted above can press the button and shout for help, leaving the radio fastened in its clip.
It's also simple to bring a GPS signal back through the system, providing you bought Airware radios with the GPS module fitted. This can provide the control room with a moving map display of where their people are, and can distinguish them by type and role.
We had this up and working for the G8 conference and the London Tube bombing.
The practice we developed was to equip officers with a second commercial handset that could do data. This gave the officers a tool they could use to run vehicle and person checks themselves, while leaving the all-important Airwave radio attached to their jacket so that it couldn't be knocked out of their hands. Of if things were hairy they could call on the radio for a person or vehicle check - the officer on the spot has the choice.
What Airwave never did, but what it was sold to the government and ACPO as doing, was data. The sales demonstrations showed live streaming video back from the scene of an incident. That got a few Chief Constables salivating and waving chequebooks.
But it is a good voice radio with all the right features for the emergency services.
Airwave also kept working during the London Tube bombing, when the mobile phone network became saturated. There was the option to invoke MTPAS at the time (and I believe it may have been done in one London Borough), but the concensus afterwards was that blocking the public from using mobile phones would have contributed to the panic. So it makes sense to not use 4g or a commercial bearer for crisis comms.
So, continue to use the TETRA network but open it to commercial handsets and offer a second (cheap, off the shelf) smartphone as a sacrificial data terminal?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
