Bernadette Lyons, managing director for North Europe, Mobileway, discusses how the mounting popularity of multi-media messaging and gaming presents content providers with the formidable challenge of providing content formats to suit the vast range of mobile devices on the market.

Today, walking into a mobile phone retailer and choosing a new handset is roughly akin to buying a new car.  Consumers are faced with a bewildering range of makes and models all with differing functionalities, added extras and a great choice of colours — as long as you like silver! Talk of polyphonic, GPRS, triband, MMS, bluetooth, Wap-enablement, Java gaming and ‘X-press on’ colour fascias has proved to not only baffle mobile users into buying the latest handset on the market, but also to keep content owners awake at night wondering how to tackle the growing problem of designing content to suit this rapidly expanding device portfolio. 

The mobile content business has experienced enormous growth over the past few years due mainly to the unexpected popularity of SMS-based services and the younger generation’s insatiable appetite for ringtones and logos. While many believe that SMS is reaching its peak, the emergence of picture messages, Java gaming and polyphonic ringtones over the past year has ensured that the potential for companies creating digital content remains attractive. According to figures published by W2F, the mobile content market will generate around 1.9 billion Euros for third party content providers in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific this year, a figure expected to increase to more than 6.5 billion Euros by 2006. With this increased potential however, increased complexity invariably follows.

SMS has both suffered and benefited from its simplicity. While many large name brands failed to be seduced by the potential of 160 characters of text, the standard format does mean that one size truly does fit all.  This is far from the case with MMS and Java gaming. As there is presently no uniform standard between handsets, the image has to be ‘re-purposed’ for almost every individual handset. With more than 200 handsets on the market, each accepting different file formats, image sizes and resolutions, content owners are faced with an enormous task to get just one MMS to both look and sound great on every handset. 

The ideal solution would be for content providers, service providers, operators and device manufacturers to work together to promote open standards to support interoperability. However, despite the endeavours of industry bodies such as the Open Mobile Alliance, this is certainly a long way off and may indeed prove to be a pipedream given the fiercely competitive nature of the mobile industry.

So in the absence of industry cooperation, how can content owners overcome the growing issue of handset compatibility? Ringtone and logo providers have traditionally ironed out any incompatibility problems by either limiting availability to certain handset types or by requesting that users text in a specific code following the usual 5-digit number to specifically request a format suitable for their mobile handset — for example, Nokia users text 87140 NOK TIMBERLAKE to get the latest Justin Timberlake ring tone. However, classifying handsets according to their manufacturers is no longer a sufficient means of differentiating between format types as manufacturers have begun producing devices based on a number of different operating systems and standards.

Also, with a market devoted to providing an intuitive and automated user experience, complicating the procedure by asking users to follow multi-step instructions simply increases the margin for error, and annoys end users.  All of these points help to build the case for automated device management at the delivery level, which is where content aggregators or end-to-end service providers rise to the challenge. 

In a bid to simplify the path to mobile content, service providers endeavour to build solutions that will arm content owners with the tools to easily manage and distribute their portfolio of sounds and images. 
 
For example, Rivals Digital Media, a leader in cross platform digital publishing, issues a range of football, rugby, golf and cricket content through its own brands as well as on behalf of clients such as sport magazine Rugby World. Having successfully run a number of SMS services ranging from sporting alerts to horoscopes over the past few years, Rivals was quick to recognise the potential of MMS to satisfy and entertain its leagues of sporting fans even further.  With a catalogue of more than 200 images, the challenge to deploy content to its fans was enormous. 

The company used a mobile solutions partner to help overcome this challenge and deploy multi-media services to reach the widest possible user base. A content management platform provided Rivals Digital Media with a means of uploading, managing and storing its content portfolio, and a means of handling device management to ensure that the selected image works with the user’s device to maximise user experience.

Images themselves are stored in different sizes and resolutions to cover the various screens available on today’s devices. Users simply text in their request for a piece of content according to the short code and keyword published in an advert to trigger both the payment and the delivery of the image. On receiving the SMS, the outsourced management platform automatically sends out a hidden message to get in return information regarding the browser or device type, simplifying device identification.

This entire process is invisible to the end user and so the service appears to be deployed seamlessly. Using this process ensures that the end user receives the best quality image available without any need to follow complicated instructions based on individual devices.

Images and animations are just two of the types of content download reliant upon gaining information about the user’s device type. The growing popularity of multi-level, multi-player gaming has brought about a surge in the development of J2ME based devices running various versions of the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) which provides the core functionality for applications running on these devices. In order for J2ME to succeed, content managers need to ensure the correct version of MIDP is detected and the Java game sent to the user is the best version for the detected handset.

Also, the recent publicity push around the launch of video phones working off 3rd generation (3G) wireless technology has heightened the interest in finding video solutions for 2.5 generation phones operating on GSM and GPRS networks today. Depending on the handset and the mobile network, a compliant device can receive the video clip via WAP Push in some cases, or even directly streamed using a play list feature based upon a user’s particular interest.

Some video messaging solutions require a player to be downloaded to the handset before the clip can be viewed; others deliver the player along with the clip in the same message. In both cases, content mangers must ensure the solution is most suitable for the mobile device. As the video download market takes off, the ability for content managers to successfully handle the sheer variety of handsets will play a key role in its continued development.
 
It is clear that the mobile content market continues to grow at a rapid pace and device management remains vital to its success in terms of fuelling consumer demand for increasingly rich content.  As the market becomes increasingly complex and inevitably more expensive, companies will find it more and more difficult to compete, and barriers to entry will grow, particularly as competition from established non-mobile players steps up. 

As mobile content becomes richer and more compelling, consumers become more prepared to pay a premium and in return expect a premium level of service.  To meet growing consumer demands, companies need to seek out comprehensive solutions to address issues such as device management to ensure the right type of content is seamlessly delivered to end users. 

As with buying a car, the more money you spend, the higher the level of service you expect and the more extras you want thrown in — who knows, the next generation of mobile devices may come fitted with heated keypad as standard. Until such times, however, content providers have to tackle the delivery issue of the day.

For many, a trusted solutions partner is the preferred option. Some may attempt to manage the process in-house, but scale and flexibility often dictate that the costs are too high. Regardless of the preferred route to the customer, it is critical that the customer experience is always put first. Mobile content is at a critical point on the adoption curve, and the quality of content delivery will dictate the winners and losers of the mobile game.

Outsourcing has the potential to save costs and improve service for telecom operators. Head of Outsourced Operations for software vendor Martin Dawes Systems (MDS), Andy Peers, argues that the future of outsourcing looks bright and that the company’s new managed service offering has the potential to significantly improve billing and subscriber management services for operators and save costs in the process.

A number of North American telecom operators have recently ditched the customised solutions they built themselves and decided to outsource the customer management and billing functions. The reason is primarily economic, but operators also believe that by reducing their operations and business support systems infrastructure, they will be left with more resources to concentrate on the things they do best; deliver telecom services.

In Europe, as in the US, there was a tendency among operators in the bygone telecom boom of the 1990s to build their own systems. Seemingly regardless of the financial implications it seemed, a number of operators embarked on IT-driven projects to build the ultimate customer care and billing solution, based on component vendor systems and involving complex and expensive integration projects.

These projects ran to hundreds of millions pounds and never met deadlines or budgets. I’m struggling to think of any of these projects that actually made it and delivered the benefits originally promised. Part of the problem was that, typically, the benefits were poorly defined.

Wake up call

European operators are starting to realise that they cannot neglect their billing and customer management systems if they are to stand a chance of riding this storm and winning in an increasingly competitive environment. Operators have experienced a period of drastic cost cutting in order to get their balance sheets into shape following the excesses of the late nineties. Costs are being cut across all areas of operational and capital expenditure, including headcount and systems replacement.

Compared to their American counterparts, European operators have been more reluctant to adopt outsourcing for non-core business activities. However, an industry survey from Chorleywood Publications suggests that this cultural difference is in the process of changing and that operators here, too, are waking up to the potential benefits of outsourcing (Billing Plus, May 23, 2003 page 8).

In the current economic climate, budgets continue to be constrained and there is an increasing need for operators to be innovative and launch new products and services quickly. The demand for improved service levels combined with a re-focus on core business and pressure to reduce costs, mean that operators are increasingly considering the following outsourcing models:

1. Facilities management, including the outsourcing of the planning, designing, and managing of buildings, equipment and systems: CRM, Billing, Call Centre, payment processing and all third party connections.

A facilities management agreement is a key enabler for companies looking to penetrate new markets. For example banks and retail organisations looking to launch as an MVNO will need the experience, expertise and capacity provided via a facilities management agreement.

2. Service bureaus, including the outsourcing of service functions, such as billing or certain niche services: mobile, fixed line and internet.
3. Build-operate-transfer solutions, which involves the initial outsourcing of functions to a vendor, before folding the service back in-house

4. Joint ventures, which are separate outsourcing initiatives involving both operators and vendors

Key drivers

The current interest in outsourcing reflects economic pressures. Operators are tightening their belts and looking at activities where they can reduce expense and improve the customer experience.

The move towards outsourcing also reflects the difficulty operators face when trying to integrate separate legacy billing systems to ensure information can be exchanged efficiently. Operators have developed a large number of different applications in-house and are finding it hard to achieve a single view of the customer.

But, while operators are interested in the strategic outsourcing of non-core activities, there is still concern over the loss of control and lack of confidence in vendors and their ability to carry out functions as effectively as the operators themselves.

Vendors therefore have a responsibility to educate the market in terms of outsourcing benefits, including access to expertise, flexibility of service offerings, operational efficiencies and cost savings.

The telco market in general has entered a period of dramatic change signified by mass-market consolidation. Operators have bought up, and continue to buy, databases in order to increase subscriber numbers. A consequence of this is the operator inherits a number of disparate systems. To improve control and efficiencies a key objective for the operator is to migrate these customers to one central base. Capacity and skill set make this a much harder objective to achieve and migrations are a prime area where a outsourcing partner help achieve this objective quickly and with limited time and resource requirement from the operator.

Expertise

When outsourcing services, operators must be convinced that they have got access to experience and expertise from companies they can trust. It is vital that operators are confident that their customers are being managed by a team of people who know the operator business, understand the challenges and enable the organisation to meet its business objectives.
 
Managed service offerings should be designed as end-to-end solutions which are capable of handling a combination of mobile, fixed line and Internet services and provide customers with one bill for all services. Customers should have access to a team of telecom/IT experts, which are dedicated to managing the hardware, software, system administration and day-to-day operations of the billing and subscriber management solutions on their behalf.

Clients should also expect managed service providers to take charge of the fundamental interfaces required for service provision. This includes all third party connections, interfaces and relationships with the networks, print bureaus, banks, clearing houses, credit referencing agencies and call centre partners.

Flexibility

Outsourcing is ideal for operators who are struggling to gain the freedom they need to be innovative and competitive when packaging communication service and tariffs. However, it is important that flexibility is built into outsourcing partnerships to suit operators’ current needs and future requirements.

Take the managed service offering as an example. While operators could choose to outsource the billing and subscriber management process for their complete customer base and all types of services, this may not always be practical. But managed services can be designed to accommodate this, and allow operators to use the managed service for selected services or customer segments.

This can be particularly attractive to operators who need to launch services in a short timescale. Enhancing an existing billing and subscriber management service in-house typically takes between 18-36 months, while managed services can be up and running and connecting customers in less than eight weeks.

Managed service offerings can also provide flexibility by offering a build-operate- transfer solution, which means that there is the option for companies to fold the service back in-house when internal processes have been brought up to speed to accommodate it.

Efficiency

Outsourcing has the potential to free up time for companies to concentrate on core business and developing its future.  Companies may also reap the rewards of additional efficiencies — such as a streamlining and standardisation of procedures and rationalisation — which can bring about tangible savings.

In terms of managed services, there should be no need to change existing systems, which means that customers can benefit from increased efficiency through low implementation time/costs and a much reduced capital expenditure requirement. Customers will benefit from further efficiencies by transferring the responsibilities for the day-to-day running of specific elements or all of the customers’ billing and subscriber management operations to the managed service providers. This will enable customers to free up management time, reduce staffing costs and lower operational costs.

The real strength of outsourcing is that operators can leverage the experience of companies and share the development costs with many other clients. Removing in-house software development means there is no need for expensive and uncertain investments and customisation, with its requirement for large internal capital resources. Outsourcing results in lower costs and higher revenues, and more services can be developed more quickly.

No compromise necessary

Success in outsourcing is about long-term partnership. By understanding how to meet a customers’ specific needs — both now and in the future — and applying the right mix of people, processes and technology, vendors can help facilitate higher levels of service quality and offer customers the increasing flexibility they need.
Quality outsourcing partnerships allow operators to focus their attention on developing their business, secure in the knowledge that the back office is taken care of and that their customers will get a quality service based on the highest industry standards.

In this challenging climate, with increased focus on the bottom line, it is essential for operators to improve the cost effectiveness of their service offerings. At the same time there can be no compromise on the level of service their customers receive if they are to remain competitive and develop in their market.

As operators in the US have demonstrated, outsourcing has the potential to improve operator performance in a competitive market. Deregulation in Europe, harmonisation of regulation between EU member states, the introduction of the Euro and cross-border mergers and acquisitions have led to increased competition here. At MDS, we are seeing signs indicating that European operators are more open to outsourcing, and are confident that the customer care and billing outsourcing market in Europe is set to take off over the next few years.

With the gradual shift away from voice-oriented handsets towards more 3G influenced designs, the major players in the handset market are developing strategies for the European marketplace. And, according to Tony Dennis, keep a keen eye on east  Asia where some companies could be as much as two years ahead in 3G development

The emphasis within the European handset market has very noticeably shifted over the last two years away from ‘voice-centric’ handsets. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the provision of mobile phones for 3G services.

Virtually all of the major market trends are directly reflected in the sales
of 3G handsets. For example, providing users with bigger colour screens,
building in digital cameras and offering a choice of a handset operation
system (o/s) have all become key factors in 3G handset design. Indeed, the 3G sector has become the ideal mechanism for viewing the direction handset technologies will take in the European market as a whole.

Asian manufacturers

Presently the leading market research firms still show that the traditional
handset vendors — like Nokia and Motorola — are retaining market share. Nonetheless, there are very clear indications that other suppliers — particularly Asian manufacturers — are beginning to make inroads into the
European market. Strategy Analytics, for example, predicts that 65 million
cameraphones will be sold worldwide in 2003 (although the main growth is in Japan and Korea).

Significantly it is two Japanese vendors — NEC and Panasonic — who were the top two cameraphone vendors worldwide, each with 15% market share during Q1-Q2 2003. By comparison Nokia was in third place with a 14% market share.

“The whole 3G handset sector is ideal for Asian manufacturers because they
are effectively two to three years ahead (of Europe),” Paolo Pescatore, a
senior research analyst for EMEA wireless and mobile communications with IDC, maintains. “They’re exporting their 3G experience and knowledge and keeping one step ahead of the likes of Motorola and Nokia.  For example, they’ve been testing [longer lasting] batteries and larger screens with 3G handsets for over two years. I see [the Japanese suppliers] playing a much bigger role in this [sector] than many other people believe.”

One dissenting viewpoint comes from Ron Schaeffer, head of product planning and strategy with handset vendor, Sendo, who argues that “With regard to the Japanese and Korean manufacturers taking the technology lead, this is partially true with respect to features like cameras and colour screens. But this is not the case with respect to mobile telephony knowledge.”

Most observers also remark on the growing popularity of the clamshell style handset (which helped to boost Samsung to third largest handset supplier worldwide) compared to the traditional ‘candy bar’ shape which Europeans still appear to prefer. Sony Ericsson maintains that 18-20% of all handsets now sold in Europe are clamshells compared to 50% in Asia Pacific and 30% in the US.

But Sony Ericsson maintains it is a growing market. Nokia, which dominates European handset sales at present, obviously doesn’t agree with this assumption. Anssi Vanjoki, a vp with Nokia’s Mobile Phone division, was asked back in June 2003 if Nokia ever intended to launch a clamshell handset. Vanjoki replied very scornfully that his designers “aimed a little bit higher than [designing] silver clamshell phones”. So it’s definitely a market that Nokia doesn’t intend to play in currently.

Another crucial trend is the desire among the mobile network operators to dictate the look and feel (user interface) of the handsets they supply to customers. And, in the case of T-Mobile, this even applies to some Nokia handsets! Ron Schaeffer claims that his company “anticipated that operators would want to dictate features. This is the basis of our business model.” He also suggests that the reason why some Asian produced handsets are now outselling the big brand names “has everything to do with the dominant role of the operator in relation to the end-user.”

Steve Ives, CEO with handset software supplier, Trigenix, pointed to the way
NTT DoCoMo is going in Japan with Symbian. The two companies have recently reached an agreement whereby DoCoMo will effectively develop its own user interface (UI) for the Symbian o/s and hand that code over to its own handset suppliers. “No operator has taken that step in Europe yet but it’s significant for 3G,” Ives suggests. He described Trigenix’s own offering as providing “around 10 per cent of the UI real estate” in handsets which have been specially customised for an operator. To date, only TMN in Portugal (with its Inove service) has officially announced that it is actively using Trigenix software in conjunction with Siemens handsets.

However, Ives argues that European operators are moving towards offering customers handsets based on standard platforms — Symbian, Microsoft and Java MIDP 2.0 — which will make it much easier to brand handsets with an operator’s UI. “I’d suggest that [other manufacturers] take a leaf out of Sharp’s book in what it is doing with Vodafone,” says Paolo Pescatore. “The close relationship with Vodafone has seen its handsets feature in [Vodafone’s] advertising which might otherwise have gone to publicising Nokia’s phones.”

Ron Schaeffer is in general accordance with such a view. “If an operator supports a model and puts its marketing power behind it,” Schaeffer says, “the less well-known operator branded phone can and will outsell phones from better known hardware brands (such as the Swing 620 from KPN, which is actually our Sendo P200).”

Trigenix’s Ives is not so sure that Sharp’s approach is correct. “There’s few manufacturers willing to step up and make changes directly to a real-time o/s based handset,” Ives claimed in an obvious reference to Sharp’s handsets for Vodafone Live!. “It’s too time consuming and costly for both parties involved.” Ironically Ives claims
that 3G handsets are actually lagging behind 2.5G handsets in customising
the user interface. “There’s such a shortage of 3G handsets it’s enabled the few suppliers to remain in the driving seat.” Hence even though Motorola has launched a Symbian powered 3G handset for 3 in the UK, it hasn’t been heavily customised. “They’re too worried about getting the handsets working and aren’t interested in the extra overhead,” Ives suggests.

Operating systems

Probably the most vocal of rivalries in this market is being fought over the
choice of ‘operating system’ for 3G handsets and 2.5G smartphones. The
current market leader is Symbian, an o/s owned by a consortium of the
leading handset vendors. Significantly, no sooner had Motorola delivered its
first Symbian based 3G handset — the A920 — to its major customer (Hutchison 3G in the UK) than it announced its decision to sell its shareholding in Symbian to Nokia and Psion. The reason given by John Thode, general manager for Motorola’s 3G, networking products, was that “We want to love all operating systems equally.” He also played down Motorola’s participation with Symbian products.

The company also said that it intended to concentrate on ‘Open’ operating systems — such as Java and Linux — in contrast to Symbian which is very definitely proprietary. Symbian’s arch rival is, of course, Microsoft with its Windows Mobile offering (the
successor to Smartphone 2002 and Pocket PC Phone Edition). Motorola once again proves to be a typical player and has announced the MPX200 smartphone which it claims will be one of several models (which will probably include a 3G handset) that will utilise Microsoft’s o/s. Showing that it has no
favourites, however, Motorola has also launched the first ever Linux powered handset, the A760, which is available in Asia but has yet to reach European shores. To complicate matters further there is a fourth potential o/s in the shape of Savaje. This is an o/s which is designed to run Java applications efficiently. It might sound somewhat obscure (coming from a small Californian company) but its backers include Orange and Vodafone.

To date the prominent features of a 3G handset have been its battery life,
signal reception and video capability. However, in launching its latest 3G
handset, the A835, Motorola emphasised the handset’s integrated MP3 Player and ability to download games such as Alien Swarm or Play Golf. This handset also supports Assisted GPS for location based applications too.

However, Andrew Wyatt, vp of marketing with Intuwave, believes that operators are walking into a support nightmare with the ever increasing complexity of today’s handsets. “There are tales of some support agents talking to customers for 45-60 minutes just to get the phone going,” Wyatt explained. His company’s solution is novel. It is a Symbian based application that allows the support agent to take full control of the customer’s handset
remotely. “It’s like PC Anywhere for mobile phones,” he claimed. The
advantage to Intuwave’s product is that via remote control the support agent
can actually test a facility — such as email — to prove it works before
completing the support session.
One handset vendor that is firmly convinced that 3G handsets will definitely succeed is Siemens — which recently launched its second 3G handset, the U15.

The company has been working very closely on 3G, however, with Japanese
handset supplier, NEC, of course. Rudi Lamprecht, a member of the Siemens
board, says,  “According to our forecasts, every mobile handset in
Europe will be 3G capable by 2010. We anticipate that there will be some 40
million users in 2005 and that the 100 million mark will be reached by year
end 2006.”

With those kind of numbers the influence of 3G on  general handset design across Europe is certainly indisputable.

IS 3 PUTTING THE WIND UP THE REST?

In amongst the good news, and it was good news, from Vodafone at its half year results, was a rather surprising dig at new entrant 3G operator 3.
Aside from all the understandable trumpet blowing on share buy backs and increased divvies, Julian Horn-Smith, chief operating officer, criticised the media for the unwarranted amount of attention 3 was getting, compared to amount Vodafone receives for all the good work Vodafone was carrying out. It seemed a little out of place at the results announcement, but perhaps the shot was fired in frustration and a growing suspicion amongst mobile operators that 3 is queering the 3G pitch for everyone else. Market perception of third generation services is going to be all important, and nobody wants another ‘surf the net’ WAP style debacle. No doubt 3 would point out that Horn-Smith is a little rattled by its progress, as it continues to sell phones in the run up to Christmas and keeps its advertising campaign inflated.

HAVE LAPTOP,  WILL CONNECT

If there is to be a WAP-reminiscent clash of hype against experience it seems most likely to come from WLAN, on whose behalf Intel and those Centrino adverts have been making great claims. Is there a wireless hotspot at the top of your local mountain?. I only ask, because viewers in the UK, and in the rest of the continent, for all I know, have been treated to a diverting piece in which two intrepid mountaineers boot up their laptop on the top of a rather large hill. Never mind the problems of negotiating the keyboard with those big gloves on, is Intel really trying to plant the seed that WLAN coverage is so ubiquitous it can head wherever you are. As a method for shifting laptops, perhaps it is working, from the point of view of managing user expectations, totally useless.

MOBILE EUROPE ONLINE

We at Mobile Europe are about to experience the reality of managing expectations ourselves as we launch our website in February. Long overdue, some of you have been telling us, while others ask why we are doing it now.
Well, it has become increasingly obvious that, try as we might, and we do try, we simply can’t filter and present all the information we would like to our readers within the pages of this magazine. We will continue to go out and find our own stories and bring them to you in the magazine as we always have done. From February, that information will be complemented by our website, which will carry daily news, as well as a full range of comment, opinion, white papers and top level interviews. The magazine will only be strengthened by the addition of the website, as it will expose us to a far wider audience and enable us to keep our readers as up to date as possible with industry developments. But we understand there is a great desire for the monthly, digestible format of the magazine and we will honour that too. We are excited about the prospects for the combined strengths of the magazine on paper and online and hope you are too. From the 3GSM Congress onwards (23 February)you will be able to find us online at www.mobileeurope.co.uk.

Ahead of the TETRA World Congress, held in Copenhagen from 24-27 November, Ranko Pinter, market information manager, TETRA Association, warns of the twin dangers to the UK Fire Service of increased cost and decreased operational efficiency if it chooses to adopt different digital radio technology to their counterparts in the police.

Interoperability — in the context of this article — put simply means “the ability of public safety personnel to communicate by radio with staff from other agencies, on demand and in real time”. The form of interoperability that involves more than one network operator is also referred to as roaming.

UK Disasters

Interoperability, or lack of it, is a major hurdle for emergency services to carry out fast and effective rescue and relief, be it an everyday road traffic accident or a major disaster. The importance of interoperability between the mobile radio communication systems of different emergency services in disaster situations is well documented.

In his paper entitled: UK Disasters And Emergency Service Communications1, Ronald Hewlett, from the UK Home Office, looks at the three major disasters in the UK in the last two decades: the Kings Cross underground fire; the Clapham Junction railway accident; and the Hillsborough football stadium disaster. Communication systems at those disasters were relatively simple, with single and dual frequency analogue radio channels without any form of priority access or no/limited linking [interoperability] between systems.

The inquiries that followed these disasters identified emergency service communications as a problem and recommended that:
 “The London Fire Brigade and British Transport Police radio equipment shall be made compatible,” (Kings Cross);

“The emergency services shall improve the communications between them to ensure, in particular, that the declaration of a major incident by any service is immediately passed by a dedicated phone line to all other services and acted on by them,” (Clapham);

There shall be “liaison and lines of communication between police, fire and ambulance services,” (Hillsborough)

US experience

An equally, if not more dramatic example, of what happens with fragmented emergency services communication comes from the United States. In his paper entitled: Emergency Communications: The Quest for Interoperability in the United States and Europe2, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger writes:

“Late in the morning of April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two sixteen-year-old students, entered Columbine High School [Colorado US] and started a shooting spree that would leave fifteen people dead, including Harris and Klebold, and dozens of others wounded…Yet as it turned out, the biggest challenge on that Tuesday afternoon was not battling the two attackers…The biggest challenge was coordinating heavily armed and ready-to-fire police forces from half a dozen sheriff’s offices and twenty area police departments, forty-six ambulances, and two helicopters from twelve fire and EMS [Emergency Services] agencies, as well as personnel from a number of state and federal agencies. Coordination was difficult not primarily because of turf wars or lack of crisis management…The real challenge was simpler-and much more serious. Responders from the various agencies had no communications system that would permit them to communicate with each other. Agencies used their own radio systems, which were incompatible with those of others. With more and more agencies arriving on the scene, even the few pragmatic ways of communication that had been established, like sharing radios, deteriorated rapidly. Cellular phones offered no alternative, as hundreds of journalists rushed to their phones and overloaded the phone network. Within the first hour of the operation, the Jefferson County, Colorado, dispatch center lost access to the local command post because the radio links were jammed…Yet the communications breakdown was to be expected. Analysis of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and the standoff between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, in 1993, in which nearly 100 people died, all pointed to interagency communications as one of the weakest links in emergency management…Public safety agencies have used radio communications systems for many decades. So far, however, most of these systems have been limited in reach and have enabled communication within a particular group or agency, but not across agencies. A group of firefighters, for example, can talk among themselves over their radio, but not with paramedics or law enforcement officers, and sometimes not even with fellow firefighters from a neighboring town or county. This severely curtails the utility of radio communications, especially in situations that demand large-scale immediate interagency communication and coordination.”

Europe leads the way

The question now is whether the emergency services have learned the lessons from these — and the more recent and shocking terrorist attacks on the Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon? There is little doubt that the majority of EU countries, including Belgium, Finland, France and The Netherlands have learnt the lesson. While upgrading their analogue systems to digital they have, at the same time, moved away from the dedicated systems for each of the services — with little or no interoperability — towards a single, shared, integrated and fully interoperable emergency communication system.  In case of Belgium, Finland and the Netherlands, the chosen technology is the ETSI standard TETRA, while in France it is Tetrapol, the proprietary technology from EADS.

Britain lags behind

When it comes to interoperability, Britain regretfully lags behind. Despite a significant investment into Airwave — the new digital radio communication system for the police, based on TETRA, the fire service has so far failed to join it, even though TETRA was designed — and has been proven in operation — to be capable of meeting the needs of fire services in other European countries and capable of solving the problems highlighted by the UK and US case studies above. The UK fire service is in the process of preparing a tender and anticipating the receipt of proposals based on variety of technological solutions. One of the technologies that has been actively promoted to the service is Tetrapol and there is an interesting parallel between what happened to police mobile communication in Europe and what would be the impact on interoperability between the police and fire in case the technology selected by the fire service is different to the one used by Airwave.

Cross-border in Europe

During the 1990s, the European Commission made a considerable investment into TETRA through a financial contribution to the ETSI budget. That was intended to ensure the development of a digital mobile communication technology that could provide an effective Europe-wide cross-border communication between the law-enforcement agencies. There is little doubt that the TETRA standard was anticipated to provide the same Europe-wide roaming for the police and other emergency services that the GSM standard was providing to private cellular users. However, the decision of France to adopt the proprietary French technology for its law-enforcement agencies, instead of the European Standard TETRA, was a body blow to the European Commission’s plan to have a single communication technology across all EU countries. Consequently, it has created a major problem for all the police forces bordering the country with the Tetrapol system.

TETRA-Tetrapol

In order to address this problem of interoperability between police forces in Europe — having two incompatible technologies instead of having a single common one across the continent — the Working Group of the Police Cooperation Council3 set up a Working Party (WP) which comprised commercial and technical experts of the PCC, TETRA and Tetrapol. After two days of deliberations, the Working Party came to a conclusion that the only two solutions that would enable TETRA and Tetrapol users to roam Europe-wide were either to have two terminals — TETRA and Tetrapol — and switch between them when they move from coverage of one system into another; or to have a dual-mode TETRA-Tetrapol terminal. A further disadvantage of having two systems highlighted by the WP was the lack of direct terminal-to-terminal operation — invaluable for close cooperation between the emergency services at the scene of an incident. Voice interconnect of two or more users from different systems via their respective control systems — available even with the old analogue systems for as long as users are in their home network — was not considered to meet the communication objectives set up by the WP.

Findings of the WP

Both of the above solutions were considered by technical and commercial experts in the WP to be economically non-viable and, while some lower-cost options were considered — such as using specially designed cross-repeaters and fixed mobile acting as despatcher stations — they all provided only partial solutions for specific and geographically well-defined border activities. In addition, most of these would be low-volume products requiring specialised technical expertise with resulting high cost and high maintenance. The ultimate indictment of the Tetrapol claim was that cellular (mobile telephony) was also listed by the WP as another fallback communication option, despite the fact that it could not meet the operational needs of the European law-enforcement agencies. The reason cellular was included on the list was simply because it offered the required Europe-wide roaming — the result of GSM being the single European standard.

Interoperability in Britain

The above example provides a useful reminder of the possible consequences of interoperability, should the fire service in Britain select a technology different to the one used by the Airwave. In addition to the terminal solution which — as revealed by the Working Party of the PCC — would involve police and fire having to carry around two terminals, or have dual-mode ones (with both alternatives ruled out as commercially/ operationally non-viable), there would be an additional requirement for a roll-out of the second network nationwide. And all this for a service that requires only a fraction of the network capacity compared to the police!

Conclusion

The price that the European Community will have to pay for failing to adopt a single communication standard for cross-border police mobile communication will be both in the additional cost of their public safety systems, and in their reduced operational effectiveness — especially in the border areas. At present, the UK police and fire services that use analogue FM share some of the same UHF frequencies, which provides them with interoperability. If the fire service selects technology that is different to the one used by the Airwave system, the cost to the UK public will either be in the additional cost, or in the degraded operational effectiveness of the emergency service. Or, most likely, in both.

Notes: 
1.  Presented at the Emergency Telecommunications Workshop held at ETSI Sophia Antipolis, France between 26-27 February 2002
2.  BCSIA Discussion Paper 2002-7, ESDP Discussion Paper ESDP-2002-03, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, March 2002
3.  Police Cooperation Council Working Group