TETRA is now seen as a stable, mature technology, with a diverse range of uses, and a  progression path for future upgrades

Final preparations are under way for the meeting of the international TETRA community at the TETRA World Congress from 26 – 29 May at the ICM international congress centre in Munich.

After the success of the 2008 Congress in Hong Kong – which attracted more than 2000 visitors from over 60 different countries – the event returns to Europe for what is expected to be the largest Congress to date. Over 2500 representatives of the public safety and security services, transport companies, oil and gas, military, manufacturing, utilities and other users of critical communications are expected to join the TETRA Association and senior industry figures to discuss the latest developments and future requirements of TETRA.

It should be regarded as a success story for the suppliers and developers of a technology that looked to many to have a limited shelf life.

Once TETRA had won contracts for public safety networks, went the thinking,  it could then be safely ignored by the rest of the wireless industry, which would scoop up further deals by highlighting their vastly higher data rates, range and abundance of terminals, and breadth of coverage.

But it hasn't quite worked like that. Instead, as we will see from some of the examples in this article, TETRA has been adopted for use in a wide range of circumstances. It also continues to expand its geogrpahic reach, and make advances technically, refreshing the technology to meet modern needs and issues.

One of these issues will be the way in which TETRA services are designed in the new cost-efficient environment.

Athough organisations employing TETRA?networks are unlikely to be able to compromise the quality of service, suppliers know they are competing in a changed world, and need to help their customers and users work in as cost-efficient manner as possible.

One way of doing this is making sure that the planning of the network makes full use of the RF?resources employed.

Dimitris Kanakidis from Net Technologies wrote in the TETRA Association's last newsletter that new TETRA network deployments need to consider two main factors: the cost of deployment, and network efficiency.

"Effective RF planning can help to achieve the optimum trade-off between these two factors," he writes. "RF planning is a tool that can assist the decision making process, eliminating the possibility of unwanted cost or performance modifications through the network deployment phase and providing valuable information such as:
– An estimation of the number of Base Stations required
– Definition of site locations, which will initiate the site acquisition procedure
– Specification of network characteristics by emulating different deployment scenarios, leading to appropriate equipment selection and planning inputs
– Estimation of frequency allocation plan in order to avoid major interference cases
– Estimation of capacity efficiency based upon specific traffic requirements
Based on this RF planning output, an equipment cost prediction can be made. This can lead to an efficient cost control of a network deployment project and help to reduce cost by avoiding unpredicted overheads."

Another aspect that can help increase the flexibility of radio resources is Software Defined Radio, which enables reconfigurable system architectures for wireless communications. Traditional hardware-based radio devices limit cross-functionality and can only be modified through physical intervention, but the current communications ecosystem means that modifying radio devices easily and cost-effectively is business-critical. SDR enables new wireless features and capabilities to be added to existing radio systems through software upgrades rather than requiring new hardware.

Axell Wireless, whose CEO Ian Brown is featured in this issue (p16) is one company taking up the SDT?mantle, by launching the first digital TETRA repeaters onto the market.

There is also a focus on the industry on outsourced networks. Just as cellular operators and other service prividers are seeing the value in outsourcing the management of their networks, TETRA network users are following the trend.

By outsourcing the procurement, installation and management of networks to a company such as Motorola, for instance, network owners can reduce their costs, and it's a trend that many expect to see become increasingly popular.

Another driver in reducing costs is to seek partnership between interested parties in building out a network.

For instance, Cardiff's city centre partnership RadioNet, a retail management and security radio, is the first deployment of a municipal TETRA network in the UK.

RadioNet is a municipal partnership which provides communications services linking retail, local government, entertainment and leisure business with the Police and CCTV control rooms.  The new digital scheme adopted by RadioNet enables seamless and uninterrupted multi-agency communication by providing separate talk groups for different disciplines within the retail, police, city centre and local authority teams.

These teams of radio users need to liaise at different times, most often to resolve issues related to security. In addition, each user needs to be clearly recognised and identified when speaking and audio must be of the necessary high quality when communicating in a busy and noisy city centre. This partnership contract was secured by PMR Products PMR Products implemented RadioNet's migration from analogue to digital technology with the deployment of a TETRA network supplied by the Danish infrastructure supplier Damm. Sepura's hand-held radios were selected for their compact size and weight, which makes them easily carried by shop-workers and wardens. 

Steve Clarke, managing Director for PMR Products comments, "The installation was completed in a record time of less than 10 days and the actual changeover from analogue to digital occurred over a single weekend. The penetration of the radio signals around Cardiff city centre is vastly superior to that of the previous equipment and the audio quality is noticeably higher. In particular, remote access to the system for diagnostic purposes proved to be invaluable when a complete power failure across the city knocked all the systems out".

As well as a focus on reducing costs, TETRA has seen expansion into different geographies and areas of use.

EADS Defence & Security recently announced, in collaboration with Beijing Satellite Science & Technology Co Ltd, the first TETRA project in China's oil and gas fields – providing a complete TETRA radio communication system for the Puguang Gas Field of the Sinopec Zhongyuan Oilfield Company. The system that will be delivered includes one DXTip switch, six TB3 base stations and a Network Management and Dispatching System; it operates on the 800-MHz frequency band.

The radio network will provide coverage over the Puguang Gas Field and neighbouring production operation areas. It is scheduled to be in full use by the end of June 2009 for managing and dispatching the production crews as well as for broadcasting important messages such as evacuation orders in case of an emergency.

"This is the first digital trunking network for Chinese oil and gas field industry, and our TETRA system meets the very special needs of the crews on the field: it is very flexible, reliable, and scalable, and above all, it can provide better safety. We are ready to build this network as a model for the whole industry," said François Bégaud, head of Security and Communication Solutions for the Asia Pacific Region.?DS is a world leading provider of mission-critical communication and Command & Control solutions through its integrated activity Defence and Communications Systems (DCS).?

Another recent Petrochem win has come from Rohde & Schwarz's Professional Mobile Radio division. It has signed a €5.7 million contract  for the delivery of a TETRA radio system to the Kuwait National Petroleum Company.  Setup of the network,  is scheduled to be completed by April 2010.

With an ACCESSNET-T TETRA network featuring latest-generation base stations (DIB-R4) and redundant exchanges (DMX-R2), the order also includes explosion-proof terminals for 1650 users. All of these contracts were announced in the past couple of months, and there have been many more that show the extended reach of TETRA.

And as well as geographical reach, TETRA?users are promised a faster future, thanks to TEDS (Tetra Enhanced Data Service). TEDS.

TEDS is part of TETRA standards Release 2, an evolution of TETRA release 1 to which it is backwards compatible. It is intended to provide a change in the data rates available over TETRA, thereby meeting the need for higher speed services.

Based on a 50KHz channel bandwidth and a 64 QAM modulation scheme (themaximum allowable) it is theoretically possible to achieve a net IP data rate of157kb/s, but this gives low protection from errors on the air interface. Instead,a high protection mechanism is typically used to ensure the resilience of thedata transmission, giving an effective data rate of up to 80kbps, available toapplications, once overheads are considered.

TEDS progress has been slow to date, due to spectrum issues, as well as manufacturers' own production schedules.

The spectrum requirement for a nationwide TEDS network is at least 2 x 1 MHz, a 50 KHz TEDS Channel and TEDS reuse factor of 20. This means that countires need to update their spectrum regulations to include 50 KHz, 100 KHz and 150 KHz channels. It also means that for site engineering and planning considerations, it is ideal to have TEDS and TETRA1 in the same, or in adjacent bands for new networks, although that dopes require  more planning effort. Operators and users have had to negotiate with regulators for spectrum.

The European Post and Telecommunication Committee CEPT has started a study to investigate the needs of emergency services for the availability of frequency bands for the introduction of Wide Band Digital Mobile PMR/PAMR in the 400 MHz and 800/900 MHz band.

But 2009 is being earmarked as the year we will see the first deployments of this technology. Motorola is providing TEDS to Nodnett, Norway's public safety network, fulfiling a contract awarded back in 2007.

So, 15 years after the Tetra Association first formed, whether one addresses the new economic climate, or the regulatory and spectrum challenges, there is still plenty of interest to discuss and look forward to within the TETRA?community.

In the first of a two-part article examining how operators can manage the next phase in their  development, Keith Dyer analyses how operators got to their current position, and outlines the dilemma they are in. In the next part of the article, industry thinkers themselves give their views on where the industry should go from here

The mobile industry has arrived, quietly, unwontedly, eyes wide shut, at a tipping point. Many mobile operators don't know where to go next, and the predicament is entirely of their own making. They will tell you different, but the problems are self-inflicted.

The questions are, what is the problem, how did they get there, and how are they going to get out of it?

PART ONE – THE SET UP
Let's look at what a mobile operator actually is, at how it makes its money. Operators buy customers by giving them expensive phones for free, or at little cost. They then make back this cost of acquisition by charging monthly fees over a set contract term. After a certain period, although there are ongoing customer management costs, an operator starts to make money on a customer.
The prepay model alters this slightly. Operators give the phones to users at slightly higher prices, and then charge customers a set amount per call. This model carries less certainty of income, but the subsidy of the equipment is lower.

For a long time, this model worked. It still works, just about. Operators provide calls at a margin, and attract additional customers by tinkering with deals and offers designed to attract certain types of user. Orange even went so far as to tell its customers that it was going to label them as a type of animal, and give them a package to fit. Virgin has just decided to call its potential users Addicts. Personalisation? Not so much.

That is the reality, but if you asked most mobile operators if this summed up their businesses, they would reject it utterly as way too reductive. The mobile data channel, they would say, gives users the potential to access a wide variety of different services, which add value to their subscription and utility to users.

Further, mobile operators are brands with the potential to be trusted providers of a range of value added services, from music downloads to payments. Mobile operators are mobile media companies, delighting their customers with a range of targeted services – from video to messaging.

So what happened? Two things.

First – competition. MVNOs and other operators began to offer ever greater bundles of voice and text, in some markets giving away huge volumes of minutes and texts before they could start making money. So the game became about volume. Customer acquisition, net adds, became key. Build the customer base, and then build the revenues, went the thinking.

Secondly – massive numbers of DSL and cable broadband lines happened. Consumer expectation of the online, internet experience changed. Mobile, used to being the cool kid in the classroom, was suddenly sitting at the front in thick spectacles and braces, eating on its own in the lunch hall. Mobile operators, though, had a plan to get with the popular crowd again. Play the cool kids at their own game. 3G. HSPA. HSPA+.  True Mobile Broadband would enable operators to offer users a host of services – and the users would pay a small amount per month, or per transaction, for each of these services, and the operators would grow the monthly revenues per user incrementally. ARPU became the goal. So they built the 3G and the HSPA networks, and they filled up their mobile websites with content, and games, and promises of mobile email, and video. And the users hated it. The users knew it was nothing like broadband, it was nothing like the experience of browsing the web, of finding and using services that made sense to you. Of interacting with other users and providers.

There was a tiered hierarchy of content. Users got a look at web-like, and web-lite,  content. On-device portals highlighted chosen services – Yahoo!, or Google, or EBay. Then the operators' own web portals hosted in-house services as well as third party applications and content. And then, thirdly, users could even enter a url in an address bar and browse off-portal, or off-deck.

And still, people didn't like it. They didn't like that they didn't always know how much it would cost them. They didn't like that they couldn't take their current email account and get access to it from their mobile. They didn't like having to stick to the content offered, or suffer a truly wild experience in the "proper internet". And the 3G networks, those glistening, wide open roads to the future, remained empty.

PART TWO – THE STING
So mobile operators had a choice to make. And some of them started to think that it would make sense to get people using data services, even if they weren't paying for them according to their level of use. Instead, they would pay a flat fee, much as they do for their home broadband, or for their other mobile services, and for that they would be allowed to go online whenever they liked. And find whatever they liked.

Operators even went to some effort to make the off-deck experience not so terrible.

They invested in faster and wider networks. They invested in content adaptation, device recognition, traffic prioritization and shaping. They invested in local caching and in data compression, in improved customer service support and user set-up. They did all this to protect their brand, and to provide users with a better experience.

And, slowly, the users liked it. Driven at first by external devices such as PC Cards and then USB dongles, then by a range of innovative handsets, users began to get it. Slowly at first, and then quickly, data usage grew.

The operators now had fuller networks, higher data usage, and cool handsets, but were they making any more money per customer? Not really. They are running to stand still.

Ovum states that even in mature markets such as Western Europe, the slowest growing region between 2008 and 2014, user growth in laptop access over the next five years is set to reach 747%, and 918% in handset access.

Yet, worryingly, Ovum says, "the growth of usage may be hard to justify at a business case level, as revenues will not rise at anything like the same level."

"Several operators have touted the idea of plugging the ARPU decline with value added services, yet we are yet to see anything sufficiently compelling in either the laptop or handset space.

"Evidence from other broadband markets suggests that banking on such revenue to make business cases fly can be extremely dangerous."

Suddenly, there is the dreadful realisation that operators stand on the cusp of ceding control of the profitable services on their network.

Worse than this, the networks were filling up with traffic, meaning that if operators wanted to keep users happy, they were going to have to invest in even more infrastructure.

Even worse, although cost-efficiency is vital, one of the few differentiators outside of services is on network quality, perhaps offering class of service and prioritisation to customers. And that requires further investment in the tools to enable it.

So the linear model looks broken, unless you want to settle down as a low growth utility. What, they are asking themselves, are they going to do next?

Network operators can use optimisation tools to save costs, and even increase revenues.  Indeed, they're going to have to

When it comes to Self-Optimising Networks (SON), vendors are looking to integrate intelligent functionality within the radio network, to address two key areas in managing infrastructure – initial functionality and set-up and ongoing performance improvements

The first is relatively self explanatory – at power up, a base station retrieves its operating system and immediately becomes aware of the environment it is functioning in, ie: whether it's in-door or, part of the macro network; its coverage area; and its frequency and scrambling code plan.

This is important if the base station is equipped with software designed radio (SDR) technology and so can configure itself according to the most effective type of connective technology. Whether GSM, WCDMA or LTE , the base station will be self-aware enough to set up the connecting IP and physical paths automatically straight to its core infrastructure.

The whole exercise will include self-calibration of transmission output and also, where appropriate, reception sensitivity, together with neighbour and parameter planning. This all is done automatically – reducing cost, and optimising the sites in order to start taking traffic.

With this process in place, the base station can not only monitor and calculate its own traffic-handling performance, but also determine the relative performance and characteristics of its neighbour sites, increasing data throughput, reducing data latency:  and improved coverage for voice and data services.
In terms of who is leading the field all the major manufacturers now claim to support SON within the LTE environment. Older versions of 2G and 3G do not have SONS built in, however: to do so requires a network add-on, which uses network and probe-based data solutions.

There is also an industry body working on a set of standards for SON. However, this is a complex and delicate process to deal with in a multi-vendor environment. How do you share the complex algorithms to ensure accuracy in such an environment?

As a result, independent third party solutions will still have an important play to play in the market for the next ten years – until all standards are implemented and an agreed global solution is in place. SON's solutions are incredible complex by their nature, and it's very likely that each infrastructure vendor will be fiercely protective of its own progress in this area. Each will look to offer SON capability as an expensive add-on to its product proposition in future years. However, this is a risky strategy and fails to address the vendor interoperability issues addressed through standards bodies such as the 3GPP.

That said, SON is an integral part of the mobile industry's future – without it, current op-ex cost models are simply not sustainable. The industry needs to learn its lessons from the fixed IP router world when it comes to "self-aware" networks.  This will in the short-term be difficult for an operator, and so independent third parties may well be needed to manage the move to SONs in order to keep pricing levels down.

Actix says it will deliver the world's first commercial Self-Optimizing Network (SON) system for LTE networks during 2009.

SON virtually eliminates human involvement for network planning and optimization and is a central element of the vision advocated by both the 3GPP and the Next Generation Mobile Networks Group, enabling a new way of managing the performance and maintenance of 4G radio access networks. Managing the radio access network already accounts for a large part of operators' total operational costs and LTE networks are set to inflate these costs further as operators strive to meet the enormous capacity demands, which users are expected to inflict on mobile networks through high bandwidth data services. The introduction of LTE will mean operators have to learn about very new and very different ways to manage the RAN more efficiently, more intelligently and at a lower cost.

"Actix' SON solutions will save mobile network operators more than 60% of their operational engineering costs because an enterprise-scale SON system can harvest massive amounts of live network data, collate it in real time, accurately diagnose and prioritize huge numbers of problems and then fix them, automatically, live, online," said Chris Larmour, Actix CMO. "SON is one of the main reasons we have been pushing so hard to build a reliable, enterprise grade platform over the last three years. It's only when you combine this kind of scalable operational platform with RF optimization know-how that you get a true SON solution. Actix will be delivering SON nodes to advanced LTE customers later this year" he continued.

SONs are intelligent networks where base stations self-optimize their operational algorithms and parameters in response to changes in network, traffic and environmental conditions. If a cell or site should fail, self-healing methods are also implemented to resolve any resulting coverage/capacity gaps. As operators expand their networks with the addition of new base stations they will be self-configured in a 'plug-and-play' fashion.

Actix' SON solution builds on the company's existing capabilities to enable fast, accurate and reliable engineering fixes to be generated and applied automatically to the radio access network in real time. In a new departure for the company, Actix will also be providing SON as a packaged network node, running on reliable, scalable hardware platforms.

"Actix is uniquely positioned to deliver true SON solutions because we have 20 year's automatic RF optimization experience, and this application combines many of our existing capabilities," said Richard Kateley, Actix CTO. "We already have the largest library of vendor-neutral data interfaces in the industry, some of the best radio network optimization know-how encapsulated in pluggable software modules, the world's only real-time RF diagnostic solution, and Actix One – our enterprise-grade network status management platform – is routinely processing terabytes of network data every day in live deployments. This combination of components is unique to Actix, enabling us to deliver the world's first live, online SON system for operational LTE networks during 2009."

ariesoGEO uses data transmitted by mobiles in the normal course of conducting a call and requires no additional hardware, such as GPS in handsets, to operate in real time or historical analysis mode. By geo-locating tens of millions of calls per minute, ariesoGEO creates a true-to-life picture of network performance as witnessed by subscribers, whether they are indoors or outdoors, in business or residential areas, any time of the day, any day of the week.

The operator will use ariesoGEO Enterprise across its network to accurately pinpoint network problems such as dropped calls, poor signal strength or low data speed wherever these may occur, even inside buildings. Through this network-wide deployment, the operator will be able to enhance the customer experience and reduce expenditure substantially. As a result, the operator expects to save up to 60% of network problem resolution costs, comparable to the savings demonstrated in previous uses of ariesoGEO by other operators.

"Information about customer location is very important in understanding how to save money and improve customer care. Knowing what the subscriber is experiencing, and being able to rectify issues quickly and efficiently, will give this operator a huge competitive advantage," said Paul Turner, VP Global Operations, Arieso. "ariesoGEO will help the operator accurately geo-locate network problems in order to reduce customer churn as well as network maintenance and deployment costs."