Tetra finalises emergency services deal

02-05-2008

by Emmet Ryan

Tetra Ireland has finalised a deal to provide the State's new emergency services digital radio system.

The contract between the Department of Finance and Tetra Ireland was formally signed on Thursday night. The deal will see Tetra provide a secure digital radio service for members of the emergency services including An Garda Siochana. Tetra was set up by a consortium of Eircom, Motorola, and Sigma Wireless to develop a digital radio system.

The deal was welcomed by the Minister for Justice, Brian Lenihan. "The Government and I have consistently given our commitment that An Garda Siochana will receive every necessary support to enable them to operate effectively as a modern police force," said Minister Lenihan.

"The provision of the new digital radio service for the Force is a significant landmark in delivering on that promise. Almost EUR100 million has been provided for Garda technology related projects this year alone and this includes significant financial provision for the new radio service."

The system is designed to provide increased security for the emergency services to prevent eavesdropping and interception of messages. The radios also come with single-push buttons that will transmit an emergency signal when used, enabling the Gardai or other services to dispatch assistance immediately to the location of the user.

The Tetra system is also designed to provide better signal quality than analogue services and enable communication with mobile and landline telephone systems.

Preparations for the rollout of the service have been underway for some time. ENN reported last year that Tetra Ireland had begun work on the rollout with the Gardai. The preparation included a service performance evaluation where a live working system covering a significant geographical area in the Dublin and surrounding areas was put in place by Tetra Ireland and was tested by the Gardai and other emergency services. This was done to ensure the firm was capable of delivering a fully-working system that could meet all of the requirements of an emergency services network.

It is planned that the service will be deployed to the Dublin metropolitan area later this year. Full nationwide rollout is expected to be completed within a two year timeframe.