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Multi-agency Plans for the system have included some special features. For one thing, a multi-agency approach has been taken from the start. Police, fire and health services, the three core users, have been extensively involved in drawing up the specifications, in the evaluations and the discussions surrounding the contract. A complex network of stakeholders has fed in requirements and opinions. Control rooms are also part of the project, and dozens of new ones will be provided for the various agencies. Furthermore, Nødnett is the first TETRA project to embed in its contract a TEDS overlay – a TETRA 2 technology designed to deliver high-speed mobile data. DNK’s responsibilities extend to the radio network,
the core network, the control rooms and operation of the network, and also the supply of radio terminals. Contractor for the project is Nokia Siemens Networks, which has brought in Motorola as its subcontractor for the radio side of the deployment, and Frequentis as supplier of the control room systems. Target date for completion of the network is 2015 – which will mean a very fast roll-out. “I like to say we are building this network for two
purposes: for a normal situation, and for an extreme situation”, Mr Lyngstøl continues. But he admits: “What happened on 22 July was even a little bit more extreme than we had planned for.” Besides managing contractors, DNK has also had to
Lessons from Norway’s tragedy A
major test of radiocommunications as a element of Norway’s emergency preparedness came on the afternoon of July 22, with a car bomb explosion in Oslo and the subsequent shootings on Utøya Island, some 25 km away – events which shocked the world. “The downtown area with the bomb blast was fully covered by TETRA and used by all services, and that worked very well”, said Dagfinn Sjøvik, project manager for Nødnett, the emergency services network. “We had good feedback from agencies after the bomb blast incident.” Tor Helge Lyngstøl, director of DNK, added: “We had an average of 2 per cent queueing, maximum, and on the most heavily loaded base station we passed 4 per cent in the busiest hour. And that is not so bad, for an unplanned incident.
“But we have decided now that we will increase the capacity in Oslo even more, for two reasons: to be even more prepared for an extreme situation and also because we want other user groups in the network.” “And then we also had the shootings”, continued Mr Sjøvik. “That actually happened just on the border of the coverage area of the initial rollout. The island was not inside our coverage area, although there were some coverage from a nearby base station. “So the end users experienced issues around being on the coverage edge. And that was proven as not being as simple as being in fully- covered TETRA – both in relation to talking to services with TETRA and also how to handle incidents within analogue system cells. “So there were lots of experiences from the shooting incident.”
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grapple with funding arrangements for the various user organizations and other stakeholders. While the State will pay for construction, users must bear their own operational costs. One tricky case has been the fire service, for which performance standards are laid down by the Directorate for Civil Protection, yet the money is provided, sometimes reluctantly, by municipal authorities. “It is a requirement
Tor Helge Lyngstøl is director of the Directorate for Emergency Communication (DNK), the Government body which owns Norway’s Nødnett (Emergency Network). For information about the Nødnett project in English or Norwegian, visit DNK at
www.dinkom.no
TE TRA TODAY Issue 5 2011
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