“Both technologies have been accepted well and will continue to serve our customers for years to come.” 

The newest products

Markus Oltmanns, of Rohde & Schwarz Professional Mobile Radio, suggested that with Asian customers “always requesting the newest standards and products”, continued growth of TETRA in the region was likely – despite competition, especially in the public safety sector, from P25 and from new and proprietary standards (including in China) such as PDT.

He added that a lot of opportunities for TETRA remained in regional growth markets for networks supporting what he calls “high-level applications” – infrastructure projects such as metros and railways, highways, airports, and harbours, as well as the mining, oil and gas, and offshore industries. 

Cases in point

There’s no better way to illustrate the rising uptake and spread of TETRA in Asia-Pac than with examples. Key players such as Motorola, EADS/Cassidian, Sepura and Rohde & Schwarz, to name but a few, are active in the region but, with user cases so numerous, only a few can be highlighted here.

Plans got underway to deliver Malaysia’s first nationwide TETRA network in 2007, when Rohde & Schwarz was authorized by the Malaysian Government to deliver and integrate a countrywide trunked radio network with the Sapura Group. Accepted in early 2010, the new system is ramping up steadily, with more and more users registering. It replaced a situation where user groups throughout the country operated different systems; intercommunication and interoperability between these agencies and regions had been very unreliable with frequent breakdown in communications, even at critical times.

Deployment was conducted in several phases through Nokia Siemens Networks and the Sapura Group as local partner. Over 500 base stations, each with up to eight TETRA carriers, have been deployed across the network. Regional base stations and switching nodes, such as those under the authority of an individual administrative district, were networked using cluster technology in order to deliver readily available channels, so that voice and data traffic is automatically redirected as soon as interference occurs on a connection path.

Coverage of the system reaches 90 per cent of Malaysia’s populated area and 4675 km of coastline, as well as reaching 10 nautical miles out to sea. Up to 70?000 subscribers can be supported.

First responders

Motorola’s earliest TETRA forays in the Far East included a system for Beijing Police in China, who bought more than 27?000 TETRA portable radios for use by first responders across all emergency services. A system for the Korea National Police to support the 2002 FIFA World Cup was claimed to be Asia’s first (and Motorola’s largest, at the time) public safety 800?MHz TETRA system. 

Hong Kong Police followed, adopting the TETRA Dimetra IP system in 2003–4, with (at the time) three master switches, one for each police region – Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and New Territories, connected together to control approximately 100 cell sites. More than 10?000 radio terminals were provided in the initial phases for beat officers, police vehicles and motorcycles; 90 per cent of these were MTP750 handhelds.

More recently, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, the company deployed Phase One of the country’s first wide-area TETRA digital trunked radio communications system for the Ministry of Public Security of Vietnam (VMOPS) – effectively the police services.

For a technically challenging project in 2003, Taiwan’s High Speed Rail Corporation selected Motorola’s Dimetra TETRA system to serve its entire 345 kilometres of track, including tunnels, stations and depots, and to operate on trains travelling at over 300 km/h. Main contractor for the project, which was claimed to be the world’s first TETRA solution for the high-speed rail industry, was Toshiba Corporation.

Aviation

In early 2008, the Hong Kong Airport Authority selected a Motorola Dimetra IP TETRA system for Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA), to “enhance the efficiency of radio communications for airport operations” as rising passenger numbers placed heavier demands on the airport’s existing analogue system. The three-site TETRA network provides seamless communications and full interoperability among users in airport operations such as security, operations, maintenance, baggage handling and other ground services. Motorola’s solution supports simultaneous voice and data messaging, multi-slot packet data, telephone interconnect, voice logging and encryption.

At about the same time, South Korea’s national and largest airline, Korean Air, replaced an analogue radio system at its main hub with a digital TETRA-based private network – in the words of Lee Hyogeun, general manager of the airline’s IT department, to “enable us to implement new working practices on a secure and ultra-reliable framework”. The airline had spent nearly three years seeking and evaluating communication technology to meet its needs before settling on a Motorola solution. Today the network serves over 4000 employees using MTP850 TETRA portables, customized with Korean language keypads, and it is expected that remaining smaller airports will be brought on to the network in due course. 
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