Cyber Security
Connecting mission-critical push-to-talk with enterprise grade apps When lives depend on co-ordinated action, there is a requirement for standards that interconnect Push-To-Talk with enterprise-grade communication apps.
F By Roderick Hodgson Director, Secure Chorus
32 | Asia Pacific Security Magazine
irst responders in medical services, police forces, border security, fire service, civil aviation, disaster relief, armed forces and other emergency services, have a requirement to communicate efficiently and securely not only with each other, but with other stakeholders such as government officials. Until recently, connecting enterprisegrade communication apps to first responders using Mission-Critical Push-to-Talk (PTT) communication has not been technically possible, but innovation resulting from Secure Chorus’ interoperability standards can enable such communication. Historically emergency services have relied on dedicated radio systems to provide these mission-critical communication services. The ‘Project 25’ standard was adopted in North America, while Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) has become widely used in 114 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, the Caribbean and South America.
The TETRA standard was designed to be entirely separate from commercial mobile infrastructure. When it was first standardised in 1995, the first 3G infrastructure had not yet been introduced to the consumer market. Since the development of TETRA however, commercial mobile infrastructure has undergone a complete transformation, with the universal take up of 4G. Commercial mobile operators are now rapidly migrating to IP-based systems and are preparing for the roll-out of the nextgeneration consumer mobile technology, 5G. This investment in commercial mobile infrastructure is bringing increased performance and additional features to the user market. Originally developed for voice communication, TETRA remains reliable for that type of communication. But it has limited capacity for handling the vast demands for data bandwidth created by the media-rich communications that have become essential in emergency response environments. Also, agencies adopting TETRA often find themselves “locked-in” to a single supplier, limiting their ability to
