The TETRA community converged on Vienna in late November 2005 for its annual World Congress for an event which took “Exploiting the Business Benefits” as its official theme.
The official position is that TETRA is flourishing as the global public digital radio technology of choice. John Cox, ceo of the TETRA MoU Association told the Congress that there are now contracts for TETRA networks (of whatever size) in 70 countries. This added up to 620 registered contracts, with 37% of them in Western Europe. Public Safety and Security accounted for 39% of all contracts, with transportation the next biggest at 24%.
Most of the tangible company announcements at the event concentrated on handset releases.
l Motorola launched two new handsets, the MTP850 and MTM800.
The MTM800 is capable of supporting multi-slot IP packet data and has a fully integrated GPS receiver for improved resource management. The GPS feature includes programmable triggers for location updates including an emergency alarm, or time or distance-based updates. It has 16MB memory in support of future features and applications and comes complete with an optional encryption module
The MTP850A, a sister terminal to the established MTH800, has a cellular style user interface optimised for TETRA to make it familiar to many users, and also includes integrated GPS.
Motorola had a demonstration centre at the event showing how terminals, dispatch centres and applications interact in real circumstances. Perhaps most impressive was an image capture and transfer application.
l Nokia announced that it had started shipping its THR880i radio. Following the 380 MHz band, the 410 MHz variant Nokia THR880i radio is expected to start shipping in December, and the 800 MHz variant in the 1st quarter of 2005.
Nokia also held a press conference to announce its “strategy” for mobile data. To some observers it looked as if the manufacturer was positioning itself ahead of TETRA 2, which will standardise specifications for high speed data. Nokia’s aim was to push the message that users already operating its TBS base stations will be “network ready” for high speed data.