Safe cities are smart cities

Reliable, robust communications - personal, industrial and governmental - have become an essential part of our society's fabric. Hytera's Peter Clemons argues that this trend will only increase, and that that's a good thing.

We live in an increasingly interconnected world, powered by an explosion in communications capabilities. What roles will communications continue to have in making our lives better, and can it make our cities safer and smarter?

Peter Clemons is head of TETRA Business, Americas, for Hytera Mobilfunk, the German division of Hytera Communications, and a regular speaker at the Comms Connect conference, having delivered keynote presentations for the past three years on a wide range of topics, with particular focus on the future of TETRA and critical communications.

Peter will return to Melbourne next month for Comms Connect 2013, to explain how cities must be safe before they can be truly smart, and how Hytera is working to make this vision a reality.

Peter is renowned within the industry for taking a forward-looking approach to business and business solutions. We caught up with him during his busy schedule and asked him to give us a forecast for the future of critical communications.

Peter Clemons, Head, TETRA Business, Americas, for Hytera Mobilfunk GmbH.

First up, Peter, how did you get involved in critical communications?

It was such a long time ago that it is hard to remember now. I'd studied and worked as an academic and economist in Latin America for a number of years and then returned to Europe during the 1990s, where I got involved in telecommunications and managed to carve out a niche within the PMR sector, working for a number of TETRA manufacturers as well as helping out end users as a consultant. TETRA was, and continues to be, my main focus and I was honoured to become a director and board member of the TETRA Association - now TCCA - in 2010, serving a two-year term before returning to consulting and then joining forces with Hytera to develop the next generation of PMR solutions.

Do you see critical communications continuing to grow?

During the 1970s and 1980s, land mobile radio was synonymous with mobile communications, before the days of GSM. Nowadays, almost everyone has an internet-enabled mobile phone, smartphones are everywhere and we all depend on mobile applications during our daily life. More and more essential services are delivered remotely and via smart mobile devices. I think this trend is irreversible and requires a total rethink of how we manage mobile networks, putting critical communications at the core of modern societies. The PMR community has a long history of providing secure, reliable, always-available services, so we must make sure we have a role to play in this mobile revolution.

There are many options for businesses and agencies looking to adopt a critical communications system. Is TETRA still a force to be reckoned with?

I have no doubt that TETRA will remain at the core of advanced critical communications solutions for many years to come around the world. There has never been a standard quite like TETRA and there will probably never be another one like it in the future. In today’s complex, increasingly integrated world, no single technology can provide the full solution for professionals working in demanding environments but TETRA provides as much as 95% of the total solution today when TEDS (TETRA Enhanced Data Service) is included. Broadband solutions such as LTE can work alongside TETRA to provide higher-speed data and video solutions for the foreseeable future.

Hytera image.

On the subject of broadband, do you agree with those who say that LTE will be the complete solution that everyone has been waiting for?

There is no doubt that LTE will be a success. It would be naive of me to suggest otherwise, considering the amount of resources being invested by major manufacturers, operators and developers within the global 3GPP framework. All major PMR manufacturers, including Hytera, are also looking at how we can use LTE to provide faster data rates for our customers in the future.

However, LTE has not been designed from the beginning to cope with the demands of the critical communications community so we need to remain engaged with 3GPP and the commercial vendors and operators in order to create the consensus required to deliver critical broadband solutions in the medium term. As the concepts of ‘safe cities’ and ‘safe communities’ develop during this decade and the next, both the commercial and critical communications worlds will need to come together to guarantee high levels of security expected by citizens. This will take several years to achieve, so we will be kept busy and will have to remain vigilant for a long time to come.

Tell us about Hytera and how it is tackling the critical communications future.

Hytera is the fastest-growing PMR solutions provider in the world. This month we are celebrating 20 years in the industry and there will be a big birthday party in China. From the beginning, Hytera has focused on providing high-quality products and solutions at an affordable price for the most demanding users, changing industry business models in the process. As convergence continues and solutions become more sophisticated, Hytera has moved into the high-end systems business with DMR Tier 3 and TETRA/TEDS offerings that are taking those industry standards to new levels. TETRA in particular is a well-known, mature global standard that continues to evolve to form the base for current and future smart society solutions including smart cities, smart grid, etc. Hytera is at the forefront of these developments, so we are truly in exciting times.

Hytera has been expanding via acquisition in recent years, hasn’t it? Can you tell us about the strategy there?

At the beginning of 2012, Hytera Communications acquired Rohde & Schwarz Professional Mobile Radio GmbH, the well-respected German TETRA systems manufacturer, enabling Hytera to become a full TETRA solutions provider. The renamed Hytera Mobilfunk GmbH, based in Bad Munder, Germany, as Hytera’s main TETRA Centre for Competence, is now the focus of TETRA R&D activities within the group. And then last year the wireless protocol specialist company, fjord-e-design GmbH (FED) was acquired in order to accelerate TETRA/TEDS development and prepare for the challenges of the future. Hytera has already delivered a TETRA Release 2 (TEDS) solution for Lima Police, Peru, based on the latest DIB-500 Release 5 base station which offers best-in-class TETRA solutions.

Your address at the upcoming Comms Connect will cover ‘safe cities’ and ‘smart cities’ - how do you define those terms, and what is the relationship between them?

Security is the basis for all societies. If authorities are unable to provide a secure environment for their citizens, it is unlikely that communities will thrive and flourish. This leads to a more uncertain economic environment where future investments cannot take place. Unsafe, precarious societies are forced into survival mode, living day by day, as we unfortunately witness in conflict zones around the world. An iPad is of limited interest if food and water are scarce or property rights cannot be guaranteed.

However, the safer our societies become, the easier we tend to forget how important public safety is. Advanced critical communications solutions based on technologies such as TETRA continue working 24/7 in the background to make our cities safe, providing the conditions for the possibility of the emergence of smarter cities built on applications that enhance and enrich all our lives.

Image courtesy Wikimedia/Martin Gloss.

With technology and societal evolution moving so quickly, is it becoming harder to anticipate the technologies and solutions that will be needed in the near and medium future?

That’s a good question. What we know for certain is that the future will be different and we will have to continue to deal with unexpected events that will challenge our emergency services and force us to come up with better and better solutions. Those societies and companies that are best able to adapt to the new circumstances will thrive and prosper. Those societies and businesses that refuse or struggle to adapt will have to go through difficult times. It is up to Hytera and other like-minded technology companies to listen to users, identify and anticipate changing circumstances and work together with the rest of the critical communications community to continue delivering the best possible solutions at an affordable price. This is the best recipe for delivering safer and smarter cities and nations in an increasingly volatile world.

Peter Clemons' Comms Connect keynote address, ‘Safer cities will be smarter cities’, will be at 9.20 am on Friday 22 November. Hytera is a Platinum Sponsor of Comms Connect 2013.