29 January 2016

Police officers in London will be able to use both the current TETRA system and the LTE-based emergency service network throughout the period of transition. © FREQUENTIS

Frequentis has been contracted to help the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) transition to the Home Office’s new Emergency Services Network (ESN) between mid 2017 and 2020.

The agreement, signed with the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime last month, follows on from the Government’s decision to replace TETRA with LTE for the ESN.  

Headquartered in Vienna, Frequentis is an international supplier of communication and information systems for safety-critical applications. It operates from offices around the world, including a UK subsidiary in Twickenham. The company has already worked with the MPS as well as other UK organisations such as Network Rail, the RAF, Essex and Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Services, amongst others.

The ESN will provide coverage for all three blue light emergency services, as well as other public safety users. It will deliver critical voice and broadband data services with appropriate coverage, public safety functionality as well as appropriate security, resilience, and availability. 

Under its contract with the Metropolitan Police Service, Frequentis will ensure that police control rooms across London can manage ESN calls from the start of the national transition in mid-2017.

The MPS is said to have Europe’s largest command and control centre with three main command centres, two sub centres, and 30 centres in the outskirts of the capital.

Frequentis will modify the the forces’ existing Integrated Communication and Control System which has been fully operational since early 2007 and was originally supplied by the company in 2005. At the time, the deal represented the largest single order in the company’s history with a total order value of more than €50 million. 

The firm says this will be partly achieved through the introduction of its Unified Trunked Radio Gateway. This was used at the Bavarian G7 Summit last June, and will be at the heart of the MPS’s dispatch environment, handling in excess of five million radio calls per month. 

Once deployed, Frequentis says MPS users will be able to use both the current system and the ESN within coverage areas throughout the period of transition. It adds that the system will also provide “seamless” integration with the existing CCTV and APLS functionalities without the need for additional training for operators.

Commander David Musker, Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme lead at the MPS, said the agreement with Frequentis is this first step in the Met’s wider adoption of the ESN, and places the force in the “vanguard” of users addressing control room readiness.

He added: “The ESN promises new capability, particularly in the area of data transfer, and therefore has the capacity to support positive business change and deliver new or improved services in support of the MPS’s ‘Total Policing’ vision.”

According to Frequentis, the world’s emergency services are increasingly looking to LTE as their next step in the provision of mission-critical communications. It says the UK’s ESN is the first large-scale implementation worldwide of this type of solution.