JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-The decision of the South African Regulatory Authority (SATRA) and Department of Communications about whether to support TETRA as a digital standard for professional mobile radio (PMR) in South Africa is still pending. A decision is possible during the first quarter of 2000.
The recently formed Southern African TETRA Association (SATA) is rallying to facilitate the introduction of this open-standard, terrestrial trunked radio system and to develop a unified approach for steering digital technology into the future not only in South Africa, but also in the rest of the Southern African region. But much work still needs to be done.
Existing commercial, analog trunked systems have not fulfilled their initial promise in the marketplace despite offering many attractive features, and they have suffered in the presence of stiff competition from cellular.
“The mobile radio industry-from manufacturer to dealer, to user-has entered a significant period of change,” said Robin Goodwin, secretary of SATA. “If the change is not managed, the low-margin, low-quality, fragmented market that exists today will continue, to the detriment of not only the industry but to the users, the regulator and the country.
“But it is more than this. The industry has been in decline for some time, skills have been lost to more modern telecommunication technologies and most users are not completely satisfied with their current, limited-facility systems. Spending on communications equipment and services is also in decline. SATA wants to help stop and then reverse the decline-wants a strong, unfragmented, expert industry.
“Cellular has led the way in showing how the adoption of a truly open standard technology such as GSM can benefit everyone. Professional mobile radio needs to follow this example as it moves into the digital era and a host of new features and facilities become available.”
If TETRA is chosen as the solution initially for providing national trunked radio service to emergency and other municipal services, it could facilitate the adoption of digital trunking systems across South Africa and the African continent. Rural wireless local loop, tele-medicine, distant learning and government networks used by government officials-eventually could economically share the same network or networks.
SATRA, to explore the possibility of a third party providing radio trunking services for the public safety and municipal segments, assigned Omnitele of Finland to conduct a feasibility study earlier this year. The project also evaluated different technologies and systems, including TETRA, Tetrapol and Project 25.
After an industry briefing and invitations for proposals, SATRA recently released the report findings and invited comments from the PMR industry.
Industry leaders, especially from Grintek, a turnkey telecommunications supplier, and manufacturers Nokia, Simoco and Motorola have expressed strong views about the report.
“The report concludes that digital trunked radio is feasible for public safety and emergency services in South Africa, but leaves the choice of technology open,” noted Franco Benedetti, Grintek’s marketing division director. “Finland, the United Kingdom and Belgium have already opted for TETRA, with others following. Even the Cape Metropolitan Council (which includes the Cape Town metropolitan area) may decide to go the TETRA route. This is clearly the way forward.”
Benedetti also said he believes TETRA was unfairly compared with other technologies and standards in the Omnitele report. TETRA was shown as being cost-effective for high-density metropolitan areas, but too expensive for rural areas.
“This by and large detracted from the initial purpose of the study, which was to investigate the feasibility of a nationwide trunked radio network,” he said. “For example, the far lower operating and maintenance costs of a reliable TETRA network were not considered. After all, operating costs will be incurred for many years after the initial capital outlay.”
Benedetti said that in comparing the standards, only manufacturer-supplied information about TETRA and the other technologies was used, placing the findings in some doubt.
The hurdle of spectrum availability also still has to be overcome. SATRA in its band planning efforts allocated the 407-427 MHz band for a third-party emergency and municipal radio trunking network.
But Benedetti points out that “the match is not exact. An upward adjustment (3 megahertz) could result in large savings and little discomfort to the current users of those frequencies.”
There are no TETRA network plans or licenses pending for the rest of the African continent because little financing is available, but plans do exist for installations in some cities and at large industrial operations, including open cast mines and factories. These applications are bound to follow the rollout of trunked radio in South Africa, depending on how quickly they are allocated locally.
