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Mobile apps could drive a revolution in professional radio too. So believes Tony Gray, regional business director with the German mobile consultancy P3 communications In the consumer mobile world, ‘apps’ are commonplace. They bring everything from location-specific weather forecasts to real time Formula 1 Grand Prix telemetry direct to our smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile devices. This trend has been enabled by the availability of adequately high-speed 3G-and-above networks, together with the growth in ever-smarter devices. Many of these run ‘app-friendly’ multi-tasking operating systems and have embedded GPS receivers and other supporting accessories. Marketing innovations such as online ‘app stores’ have also greatly boosted the uptake of a whole range of apps in the consumer world. Whilst this particular element may not have such relevance to the professional communications world, the same trend towards more and more targeted apps becoming available is likely to apply to the critical communications space in future. Available now Already today, a number of applications are available to TETRA business and public safety users and others, meeting needs such as automatic vehicle and person location (AVL/APL), online database query and update, dispatching of incident details and so on. Leveraging features such as TETRA Group SDS to overcome the inherently limited bandwidth of a TETRA 1 bearer, some app developers have achieved impressive results, even for such relatively data-intense applications as sending pictures. Frivolity or functionality? None of the foregoing is intended to suggest that TETRA radio users will all be happily playing Angry Birds or tweeting on their devices in future! Far from it. These are mission-critical users with an important job of work to do and who rely on their communications devices to do it efficiently. But professional apps targeted at the specific functionality such user groups need to get the job done better, faster, more effectively and so on will definitely have a role to play. Focus on apps With its mission of bringing together everyone who is doing data applications on TETRA, the recently-formed TETRA Association Applications Working Group (https://apps.tetra-association.com) will be running an application development seminar at this year’s TETRA World Congress, taking place in Budapest in May. The group’s chairman, Hannu Aronsson, says they’re working on technical topics related to data and applications – everything from collecting user requirements to developing specifications and proposing solutions to identified issues. The ever-growing membership of the group, comprising users, operators and manufacturers as well as application developers themselves, bears testament to the interest in the topic throughout the TETRA and critical communications communities as a whole. A growth market, app-solutely… Mobile consumers have long since grown used to having apps as part of their daily work-and-play environment. The catalogue of apps developed specifically to meet the needs of professional users will continue to expand over time, especially as enablers such as Java on devices, larger, higher-resolution colour screens and wider bandwidth data bearers, including TEDS, are rolled out. Thus, in a classic market-led manner, user demand and vendor innovation will drive the TETRA and wider critical communications sectors as a whole along a path already well-trodden by the PlayStation generation and ‘Twitterati’! “The operator accesses the surveillance video stream using our software in the control room and decides to assign two units to the incident. “The control room operator pushes task assignment information and an image of the incident using task management and image push messaging apps to the selected units. “The information is immediately displayed on both in-vehicle computers and also on the unit handheld terminals, in fact on a wide range of potential devices, independent of their mobile operating system. “Both units acknowledge the task assignment using status update from the Java client’s easy-to-use status update button. The control room operator can follow the location of the units and their status while they converge on the incident location.
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