Tetra


Tetra and LTE: sorting out fact from fiction


Land Mobile talks to Phil Kidner, chief executive officer of the TCCA, about the part Tetra and LTE technology have to play in the future of critical communications


Tetra World Congress. Te event in Paris this year attracted the highest number of visi- tors in its 15 year history, due in part to the showcasing of the potential of LTE for public safety broadband applications in the future. While the future is unknown, the presence


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of concept applications and devices created much interest, and there were concerns that the focus was shifting from Tetra, which is the dominant mission critical communications technology in the world. We asked Phil Kidner, chief executive officer


of the Tetra & Critical Communications Asso- ciation (TCCA), to set out the fact and the fic- tion regarding mission critical communications.


Are the manufacturers of Tetra switching to LTE? Some Tetra manufacturers are planning to add LTE capability to their portfolio whilst continuing to fully support Tetra. Te devel- opment of the Tetra standard continues, with new features, devices, applications and infra- structure, demonstrating Tetra’s continued leading position in the PMR market. Te availability of TEDS for wideband


data enables organisations to deploy wide- band data services throughout their Tetra networks with the same levels of coverage, security and resilience they already enjoy. Tetra networks already support the majority of applications used by public safety and mis- sion critical users today, and the increasing number of applications is catalysing signifi- cant growth in the availability of end-to-end solutions that deliver operational efficiencies to end-user organisations via their existing Tetra network.


So why are the manufacturers promoting LTE? LTE as a broadband data service will com- plement Tetra, offering the ability to stream high quality video and transport very large


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he annual Tetra World Congress is now known as Critical Communi- cations World, incorporating the


data files. A private LTE service working with Tetra will give users a win-win situation with Tetra as the wide area or nationwide voice and narrowband data service, and LTE available as an overlay to offer broadband data/video services in selected areas as determined by need, finance, and availability of spectrum.


Why not simply use commercially available LTE? Te use of commercial LTE makes sense as an interim capability to carry non-critical and everyday data to enhance operations and ef- ficiency. However, the LTE standards do not currently support any of the services consid- ered vital for critical users, such as for example group working and direct mode. LTE does not provide the coverage, enhanced resilience and security required by mission critical users. It is important to realise that commercial


operators are driven by their business mod- els – they need to generate revenue from the mass market for mobile communications. It is costly and of limited benefit for them to fully replicate the features required by public safety and mission critical users. In addition, service is imperative for these


users in times of emergency or major events, the very times when commercial networks are highly stressed and sometimes have to be lim- ited or even closed down.


What is being done to bring LTE up to scratch for public safety users? Te TCCA and many of its members are working in the standards development organ- isations, such as 3GPP and ETSI, to lobby for key and fundamentally required addi- tional features to be incorporated into future releases of the LTE standards. Several releases of the LTE standard will be


needed to meet the needs of public safety. It is also not clear yet either whether manufactur- ers will have the incentive to build new prod- ucts that incorporate the new features. If and when the required features for pub-


Phil Kidner, chief executive of the TCCA


lic safety become available over LTE, and are incorporated into commercially available equipment, the TCCA is proposing the use of private LTE systems dedicated to handling broadband data for mission critical and busi- ness critical users, working alongside Tetra for mission critical voice services.


Will Tetra eventually be replaced by LTE? Tat is up to the manufacturers delivering the technology to meet the users’ demands, but certainly not for a decade or so for the fol- lowing reasons: • it will take many years for LTE to duplicate the features built up in Tetra over two decades, particularly in such areas as group working, voice, pre-emptive services, network resilience, call set-up times and direct mode;


• LTE does not define group communication services so they need to be implemented;


• even in commercial LTE networks, voice serv- ice is still in the process of being standardised, and is some time away from commercial avail- ability at an acceptable quality;


• nationwide deployments of either commercial or private LTE will take some time, whilst Tet- ra is already deployed widely, and continues to be implemented for national networks.


LAND mobile August 2013


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