Sharing public safety communications networks can provide many advantages for a range of organisations. However, to ensure that individual agencies’ requirements are met, it is imperative that the balance between core and non-core users is optimised.
Sharing a radio network between public safety agencies, such as the police, fire and ambulance services, makes considerable sense, to facilitate inter-agency communication and cooperation and reduce the need for duplication of infrastructure resources. There are also many advantages for non-emergency service agencies, both in the public and private sector, using the same shared network.
However, for a shared communication infrastructure to be used to its best advantage, a number of parameters need to be considered to ensure all users’ needs are met, and no one agency’s requirements are compromised. Considerable care needs to be taken with the contractual arrangements to ensure that each agency’s contribution is a true reflection of its actual usage of the network.
Among the lessons learned by Airwave’s experience in the design, installation and management of a number of shared public safety networks in the UK, Europe and Australasia, is the simple fact that different types of agencies have different communications requirements. While a TETRA or P25 network is capable of meeting these varying agencies’ needs, more so than a standard mobile or commercial-grade private mobile radio (PMR) network, it is also more expensive. As such, it is important that users actually value the capabilities and features of the system over and above what a mobile or PMR alternative can deliver.
The key communication requirements of the police - coverage, capacity, availability, security, resilience, and terminal functionality - became the fundamental design criteria for the finished UK public safety network.
Differentiation of delivery
The UK network has demonstrated a clear differentiation between the needs of the principal core users. The public safety network was initially designed for the police and its key requirements became the fundamental design criteria for the finished system. Additionally, the system has a data capability.
While the ambulance service requires very similar coverage, availability and resilience to the police, security of voice traffic is a lesser consideration. By contrast, data capability is important and the security of data transmission is imperative to meet the data protection requirements of the health sector.
Due to the smaller nature of the agency, the ambulance service also requires a fully managed end-to-end service over and above the network services provided to the police.
In comparison, fire service requirements are notably different to those of the police and the ambulance. The fire service not only values vehicle-radio coverage in preference to handheld capabilities, but it also places much less importance on security. Availability and resilience remain crucial elements - both for voice and data - with additional ‘power resilience,’ an element specific to the fire service.
Beyond these front-line emergency services, cost becomes more crucial, with a greater need to balance the capabilities of a TETRA/P25 network over a cheaper mobile or PMR alternative. Here, non-core users include local councils, government departments and public transport agencies.
Importantly, these smaller agencies each see benefits in using a dedicated network that links into the larger agencies. The Cabinet Office is a prime example of an agency in the UK that sees value in interoperability with incident command of the police and other security forces. Other examples include the Maritime and Coastguard Agency - which is interested in general in-shore communications with the police, ambulance and RAF - and the Prison Service, that wants to interoperate with the police.
Equally, the Environment Agency wants interoperable communications with a number of agencies to facilitate the coordinated responses to environmental incidents, such as floods, snowstorms and waste spills. Even the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals can benefit from the ability to communicate seamlessly with larger agencies. Each of these organisations sees a unique benefit to being able to coordinate its communication with other agencies in a manner not possible if they had opted for a traditional cellular communication solution.
The diverse array of users similarly demonstrates differing agency requirements. Coverage, security, availability, resilience and interoperability are all still valued by non-core users, but to varying degrees for each end-user. Overall, the key combination of coverage, availability and resilience has been the overriding factor for most users to select the TETRA/P25 option.
Setting the service level
These non-core users also differ from the police, fire, and ambulance services in the nature of their contracts. Typically, the expected provision of network services and features is defined for smaller users under a standard contract format. These contracts also provide the opportunity for ‘add-on’ contract services, such as terminal management, control room services, terminal numbers and fleet mapping, plus options for further tailoring of the system.
By comparison, the core users have the added advantages that service level agreements (SLAs) deliver. These, similarly, include an indication of the range of services and included features the user can expect from the network. However, every SLA is different and reflects the unique service needs of each agency. For example, the UK fire and ambulance contracts include the provision for management of terminals, services and control rooms, as well as network services, whereas the police only require that network services be provided.
Under an SLA, any failure to meet an agreed service level results in an accrued service credit. This can be reimbursed back to the agency directly, although more commonly the credit is used to improve the infrastructure in order to mitigate the chances of similar service level deficiencies in the future.
Allocating operational costs
With each agency’s use of the network, it becomes essential that operational costs are apportioned fairly, and a number of models exist to facilitate this process. By ensuring a transparent and itemised relationship between price and service deliverables, the political processes, regarding funding, can be simplified and claims of unaffordability can be successfully mitigated.
While apportioning operational costs can be difficult, the allocation of capital costs can present a greater challenge. As the agency for which the UK public safety network was primarily designed and established, the police have necessarily borne the brunt of the initial capital costs. When the fire and ambulance services subsequently began using the system, they were, in effect, able to have the benefits of an established infrastructure. The main capital cost faced by the fire and ambulance services has been to cover the 30,000 additional radio sets required and to tailor the capacity and coverage of the network to meet their own requirements.
To share the capital costs, the ideal scenario would be for all agencies to adopt the new communications package in parallel. Realistically, however, it is inevitable that one agency will take the lead as the ‘anchor’ organisation for the new network. As the largest, most sophisticated agency - and the one with the greatest requirements - the police make an ideal anchor agency in most countries or states.
Whichever agency takes the lead, the services and features they select will, in effect, become the benchmark for additional users. As new agencies subsequently join the network, they will then be able to choose which features of this established network they do and do not need and which add-on features they require.
The fire service places a high value on availability and resilience - especially ‘power-resilience’ - for both voice and data communications.
The ambulance service requires very similar coverage, availability and resilience to the police, with an additional requirement for a secure data capability.
The tender process
In the UK, each agency went through a user-requirement phase before going out to tender. This was a more onerous process for the police, as the pioneer client for the network. For the fire and ambulance services, the network capabilities were a better known quantity, and negotiation revolved around variations to the established police platform to meet each individual agency’s requirements.
For the smaller contractees, far greater standardisation was offered. The police contract enabled Airwave to offer services to other authorised users in return for a slightly discounted overall price for police users. A discrete product - Airwave Direct - was developed to enable services to be offered to small scale agencies, with a framework in place to make specialist capabilities available, such as dispatching, control rooms and mobile data. However, it was only possible to meet the needs of these small agencies with the anchor tenant already in place.
Where possible, it has been advantageous to allow for service differentiation - with prices to match - to ensure users are not overpaying for services or features they don’t need. In practice, it is difficult to unbundle the standard features of the TETRA or P25 network functionality and the savings to be made here are limited, especially given the fact that coverage remains the biggest cost driver. Rather than deconstructing the basic network provision, most differentiation has actually been achieved by adding additional services - including capacity, coverage, security, resilience, tighter SLAs, mobile data solutions, telemetry, and end-to-end service management.
Outsource management
The end-to-end service provision option ensures that users can completely outsource management of their mobile communications solution. This further ensures that upgrades are better coordinated between the network, terminals and control rooms. Research recently conducted by Airwave’s sister company Arqiva concludes that the main benefit to outsourcing such non-core services is cost savings.
A typical mid-sized regional police force, for example, can potentially have cost savings of around $900,000 over a four-year period by outsourcing its communications services. This equates to the cost of 16 additional officers on the beat for five years, two officers redeploying from communications management to frontline duties and total staffing savings over four years of $500,000.
Cost saving potentials are a recurring theme with shared networks, both for individual organisations and collectively through sidestepping the need to replicate communications infrastructure for each separate agency. While care needs to be taken to ensure that, as additional organisations come on board, the quality of the service for core users is not compromised, the reality is that, as more agencies use the network, the greater the infrastructure investment will be and the better the service enjoyed by all. Shared networks allow users to enjoy unprecedented inter-agency interoperability, while delivering unparalleled levels of coverage, availability and resilience.