FCC No TETRA on Public Safety Bands

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ElroyJetson

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This study brought to you by, and paid for, the largest P25 vendor and radio company in America, which shall remain unnamed.

I'll just BET.

Funny thing is, they are a major, maybe even dominant, TETRA vendor in Europe. They just don't want to see their P25 investment go to waste.
 

Markinsac

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I look at it this way - Europe used TETRA as their platform - the US chose P25.

The cost to make TETRA compatible would not be trivial. In addition, you wouldn't be able to scan TETRA - it is almost always encrypted. It is also designed to use smaller areas (like cellular) in size, and isn't repeated in any area that doesn't have an active radio on that group. The groups in it are also more granular, so listening to something in an area on the other side of a city isn't going to work for you.

At least with P25, we have the possibility of scanning when not encrypted, or when opened for interoperability during large-scale events.
 
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DaveNF2G

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TETRA = Motorola Open Sky

Not exactly, but somewhat comparable.
 

nosoup4u

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Looks like NJ Transit will have to come up with plan b.

They have had constant license and frequency changes since they started rolling this out. It would seem there has been a lot of issues behind the scenes.
 

Darkstar350

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Whats more of the issue is that - in the tri-state area in particular 800mhz is very congested(and probobly soon to be 700mhz) and it would require a lot of testing to see how a mode such as Tetra would function being that it has not been used much if at all in the entire country

My opinion is that i am more partial to P25 when it comes to digital voice - and i would even go as far to say as companies somewhat threw their money away on DMR - from a financial standpoint at least because if a manufacturer is going to spend time and money creating a voice format then they should basically just stick with it and keep making improvements - thats essentially why analog equipment still is relevant and reliable because its "tried and true" technology that has been improved on for generations...

Everything else aside - the use of Tetra in the US shouldnt be completely out of the question - just probobly not the best idea to use on a rather "competitive" band such as 800mhz at this point though im not certain if Tetra radios are available on other bands...
 

mikewazowski

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This study brought to you by, and paid for, the largest P25 vendor and radio company in America, which shall remain unnamed.

I'll just BET.

I'll take that bet. The company that filed the petition is named on Page 2.
 

mmckenna

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What was even more useful out of this decision is they did a nice job of putting into words that "interoperability" needs mean that FM analog is still the preferred choice and requiring radios used in VHF, UHF and 7-800MHz be able to do analog FM.

Banning the overly wide bandwidth TETRA was good. Actually putting in writing the need for FM analog interoperability was even better.
 

902

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Looks like NJ Transit will have to come up with plan b.

They have had constant license and frequency changes since they started rolling this out. It would seem there has been a lot of issues behind the scenes.

Not necessarily. Based on the current R&O, they would not be allowed to use TETRA on 700 or 800 MHz NPSPAC channels, but would be allowed to do so on general pool or vacated spectrum. It all depends on what frequencies their operations are on. 800 MHz used to be pretty straight-forward, but is now convoluted into several different rules and requirements.

"Issues" isn't the word.
 

902

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I'll take that bet. The company that filed the petition is named on Page 2.

Both predominant North American manufacturers factor in, along with a strong P25 stakeholder/shareholder group. I don't expect PowerTrunk is going to roll their office and investment up and go back to Europe anytime soon, though. Their lawyers are probably wearing a shiny path in the floor tiles at the Portals II as I type.

"Radio" has been fraught with battles over the years, whether it was Armstrong vs. Sarnoff, Kahn-Hazeltine vs. Belar vs. C-QUAM vs. V-CPM. These are the "interesting times" of our era.

As for the time and money invested, they do so as the rest of the public safety communications ecosystem (manufacturers, vendors, service providers, users, regulators) and the rest of the TETRA-using world moves toward LTE. It might be in the courts longer than the product is relevant.
 

Project25_MASTR

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Not necessarily. Based on the current R&O, they would not be allowed to use TETRA on 700 or 800 MHz NPSPAC channels, but would be allowed to do so on general pool or vacated spectrum. It all depends on what frequencies their operations are on. 800 MHz used to be pretty straight-forward, but is now convoluted into several different rules and requirements.



"Issues" isn't the word.



That was what I was wondering, does this ruling also apply to the IG pool? Hard to tell from the article.

I'm actually subbing on a communications project for a European owned gas plant upgrade on the gulf coast. 24 million dollar facility upgrade…the company will not look at anything but TETRA.
 

Evgeni

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Both predominant North American manufacturers factor in, along with a strong P25 stakeholder/shareholder group. I don't expect PowerTrunk is going to roll their office and investment up and go back to Europe anytime soon, though. Their lawyers are probably wearing a shiny path in the floor tiles at the Portals II as I type.

"Radio" has been fraught with battles over the years, whether it was Armstrong vs. Sarnoff, Kahn-Hazeltine vs. Belar vs. C-QUAM vs. V-CPM. These are the "interesting times" of our era.

As for the time and money invested, they do so as the rest of the public safety communications ecosystem (manufacturers, vendors, service providers, users, regulators) and the rest of the TETRA-using world moves toward LTE. It might be in the courts longer than the product is relevant.

So with LTE, is the EU going to have it on it's own seperate netwrok, or is it going to be on the public cellular network where a cvilian watching YouTube can have priority over a paramedic?
 

Project25_MASTR

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So with LTE, is the EU going to have it on it's own seperate netwrok, or is it going to be on the public cellular network where a cvilian watching YouTube can have priority over a paramedic?



Supposed to be separate. I know one of the major ideas for LTE integration (granted we are beginning to see PTT Two-way like devices) was to have a network next the to existing carrier network where a first responder can use either network on the same device.
 

902

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So with LTE, is the EU going to have it on it's own seperate netwrok, or is it going to be on the public cellular network where a cvilian watching YouTube can have priority over a paramedic?

I'm in the United States, so I'm not directly involved in anything elsewhere in the world. But my current job relates to spectrum management, and I do follow current events relating to spectrum utilization. Here's an article from a few years ago that outlines Great Britain's plan to migrate off TETRA to LTE, and the Home Office's program(me), itself:

U.K. Preps for Broadband Mission-Critical Network and
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-emergency-services-mobile-communications-programme

There's a whole lot more on it but I don't have a lot of time to dig for more examples right now. The UK appears to be in line with, or slightly ahead on their timeline with respect to the U.S. FirstNet program in implementation.

My understanding is that a "public safety LTE" network would initially start off as an MVNO with prioritization, and then, as revenues come in, the scales would eventually tip from MVNO to network operator with their own hardened infrastructure and exclusive spectrum. The other LTE partners in Band 14 would be contracted to provide overflow services. Public safety would have ruthless preemption ability over commercial users. So, the kid streaming Hulu or listening to Pandora may be consuming bandwidth during slack events, but would be either choked down or preempted during an acute event. Where we may see some interesting stuff is when we're transmitting bodycams, biometrics, equipment function indicators, sensors, and body area network information, alongside several dozen others doing it. And we might have that capability, but then the issue would be how much one person has the capacity to analyze before there is information overload or bedazzlement (looking at something spectacular and maybe not focusing on 2 minutes of air left in the SCBA).

The business model changes from time to time, but I believe the operator of the network would allow prioritized access to non-public safety users to obtain revenue for build-out. I could be wrong, as I've never completely understood our model here. I'm not sure of the UK or the rest of the EU, except that the movement is afoot.

Anymore, something like that would be a wireless "cloud" with 5G relying on not only LTE, but higher frequency and bandwidth femtocells and desktop hotspots to backhaul data through fiber or wired connectivity. The IoT concept and what it offers for augmented reality is going to require tremendous bandwidth, so the Hulu notion might not be the biggest competition for resources.
 

902

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Supposed to be separate. I know one of the major ideas for LTE integration (granted we are beginning to see PTT Two-way like devices) was to have a network next the to existing carrier network where a first responder can use either network on the same device.
That switching back and forth would more than likely not require conscious intervention, but would be a set of preferences and thresholds programmed into the device to weight the public safety network, but use other means if that's tied up or isn't of sufficient QoS at that moment. The key to a good public safety system is to not make it complicated for the user. All the levers and pulleys go behind the scenes and the FF/LEO/EMT never deals with it.
 

Darkstar350

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A lot of European countries have TETRA networks in the 380-430 MHz area.

2/300mhz is used by the military so that would be off limits and im not quite sure what 430mhz is used for possibly television stations?
So yeah the bottom line is pretty much the airwaves are a bit too congested in the States to introduce something like Tetra
One thing i could think is it could possibly be tryed out on 900mhz then again i think some of 900mhz is cellular/wifi data however i am not much into cellphones so most phones today could be up in the Ghz range by now for all i know...
 
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