OXFORD, England-Trunked radio networks are the poor relations of the European mobile community. PMR (Private Mobile Radio) and PAMR (Public Access Mobile Radio) networks are used widely in public-safety and civil markets, but are inflexible and outdated. A sorry situation compared with the success of cellular.
But now there is renewed optimism within the mobile-radio community. The revitalization of mobile radio in Europe has begun.
All the existing trunked radio networks are analog, based on the 20-year-old MPT1327 standard. They provide regional service only and operate in different frequency bands across Europe. Coverage is poor, terminals are limited in capability and compatibility, and the networks cannot support handovers or wide-area dispatch. The industry has not kept pace with a market that now expects coverage and functionality similar to digital cellular.
But the mobile-radio market demands features that cellular telephony cannot provide. It wants high data rates, instant call setup times, and work-group capabilities for handset-to-handset voice and data calls within closed user groups. Such features are contained within the TETRA digital mobile radio standard developed over the past eight years by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).
TETRA originally stood for Trans-European Trunked Radio but is now referred to as Terrestrial Trunked Radio, illustrating the global ambitions of its proponents. Rather optimistic ambitions, some would say, given the history of the standard.
Early work on TETRA suffered from shifting goal posts and deep distrust between manufacturers. Many companies exploited ETSI’s consensus procedures to block progress, employing delay tactics for their own strategic purposes. Heavy political pressure from the European Commission had to be imposed to mandate a pan-European standard.
TETRA core standards were published in 1995, and a four-stage development process is continuing, with phase 3 scheduled to be completed later this year. TETRA equipment is now available, mainly from Motorola Inc., Nokia Oy and Simoco (originally the PMR division of Philips N.V.). Some European countries have issued TETRA network licenses for civil applications, and the first networks are being rolled out.
But the delays and arguments surrounding TETRA have left a legacy of uncertainty and acrimony. A rival system- called Tetrapol-developed for the French police by Matra, is pressing aggressively for adoption by ETSI as a digital mobile radio standard.
Tetrapol is an FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access) system tailored to private-network PMR applications. It claims to be complementary to TETRA, which uses TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) and is better suited to PAMR public networks. Tetrapol already has 25 networks operational globally. In western Europe, it has systems in France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland-mainly in the public-safety sector.
Matra, supported by AEG and recently Siemens AG, has been waging a fierce campaign against decisions to award TETRA licenses. The TETRA camp dismisses Tetrapol with disdain.
It has become a religious war.
The battle heated up last September when Matra issued a writ against the United Kingdom government’s Home Office challenging a contract to implement a TETRA-based system for the police forces. Arguing the contract was illegal under European Union law, Matra claimed damages. The company now insists it just wanted the chance to prove Tetrapol in a direct comparison between the competing systems, a more conciliatory stance possibly related to the recent sudden, and unpublicized, replacement of the head of Matra’s PMR division.
And it’s no longer a two-sided contest. The GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) community earlier scored a major victory when the confederation of European Railways chose a GSM-based solution rather than TETRA for its new internal communications system.
The GSM standard now is being extended to incorporate PMR functionality. Building on these enhancements, L.M. Ericsson has just announced GSM Pro, a PMR/PAMR solution using existing GSM networks. GSM Pro will be available commercially by the end of 1998.
But now there is another player on the scene, an operator rather than a manufacturer. TETRA has found its champion. The cavalry has arrived, heavily disguised as Canadian Mounties.
Montreal-based Telesystem International Wireless Inc. (TIW) has been steadily acquiring PAMR operators and TETRA license holders across Europe. Its strategy is clearly based on Nextel Communications Inc.’s success in the United States. Nextel increased an acquired subscriber base from 300,000 to 1.3 million in just one year.
TIW quickly has become the largest mobile-radio operator in Europe with some 186,000 subscribers. It dominates the PAMR scene in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, Europe’s largest markets. TIW intends to build a trans-European PAMR network from this platform. It will be a TETRA network, christened Dolphin.
The plan starts in the United Kingdom with a US$325 million investment in the world’s first commercial TETRA network, slated for launch in early 1999. Dolphin will combine the benefits of digital cellular with the work-group features of mobile radio.
It eventually could become a seamless European network with integrated customer care and billing, avoiding the costly sharing of data and revenue between different network operators.
Dolphin neatly encapsulates the original vision behind TETRA. The name was chosen because dolphins are intelligent, gregarious, friendly and synonymous with a caring attitude in western society. That’s certainly a radically new approach to mobile radio in Europe.
