South Africa`s hosting of the 2010 Soccer World Cup might spur government to formulate a national TETRA network strategy, as current efforts are driven at local government level.
Jeppe Jepson, vice chairman of the TETRA MoU Association, says major international sports events, which require co-ordinated crowd-control strategies, have recently accelerated the roll out of TETRA networks in host countries.
TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) is an open digital standard defined by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute.
During a recent visit to SA, Jepson told ITWeb that the time remaining before the World Cup should give the country enough time to complete a roll out, but added that government would have to act speedily.
"The Athens system, for the Olympics, was put in place in less than a year. However, it must be remembered that SA has unique challenges in terms of its topographical landscape, which is vastly different to Europe," he commented.
"In addition, the most time-consuming part of rolling out a national TETRA network would be site acquisition, environmental-impact assessments and the preparation of facilities."
Unmatched in crowd-control
SA has deployed a TETRA network in the Cape Town municipal area, in 2001, and is about to see the construction of a police network in Gauteng province, which is expected to be completed by 2007, but little has been said about a national network.
Jepson pointed out that most governments in Europe have already established TETRA networks as a means of improving their communication abilities in time of emergency, with the UK currently leading the pack with 3 500 TETRA base-stations.
TETRA, he explained, offers security and resilience that cannot be matched by any standard wireless network, and provides governments and their agencies with their own exclusive networks that do not compete for capacity with GSM systems.
The narrow-band network runs on the 4.9GHz band that has been set aside for government use, and is not restricted by the lack of commercial bandwidth availability in SA. In line with the TETRA standard, the channel spacing of carriers is 25KHz, and in this bandwidth, the maximum attainable data transmission speed is 28.8Kbps unprotected.
"I don`t see any alternative technology within the next 10 to 20 years, there is no big market push expected," Jepson stated.
In terms of SA`s uptake of TETRA technology, he said that several roll-outs had been discussed in various parts of the country, but final approval was being held up mostly by local government bureaucracy.
"It is currently being held up by government`s rules for spending money, multilevel approval processes and the limited validity period of tenders," Jepson said.
Ironically, though, SA has previously expressed its support for the establishment of a cross-border international TETRA network, which would facilitate rescue and aid efforts during times of large-scale disasters.
"SA faces the same challenges as the rest of the world. It`s difficult for emergency services to convince the political world to install such networks - it typically takes a disaster. The September 11 attacks in the US and the Madrid bombings finally prompted the EU to consider cross-border co-ordination," Jepson noted.
However, a major sports event might do it for SA as well.
"All major crowd-control situations around the world in the last five years have used TETRA networks, and Beijing is currently installing a network for the 2008 Olympics," said Jepson.
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