Some weeks ago, the Critical Communications Association, TCCA, arranged a webinar that, with the explicit titled “TETRA to 2035 and beyond” was aimed to explain the ongoing enhancement of the mission critical communications standard, and its assured future.
During the presentation, they talked about the reasons that make TETRA such a successful technology, and with a long term future. Speakers underlined the confidence from users and operators in longevity of the technology which is well supported by manufacturers, the true mission-critical capabilities, a comprehensive terminals interoperability testing regime, and the fact that it is a mature and high quality ETSI open standard under continual development as the motives to understand the success of TETRA.
“TETRA has proved itself to be the “GoTo” technology for critical communications users over the past years and has an extensive range of well tried and trusted functionalities which are still required”, underlined.
Numbers prove that: there are more than 4 millions users worldwide, and the expectations are that these figures keep of growing. In Europe, that has more than 50% of the installed base; growth expected to be 2.4%. Asia Pacific is the second largest region, followed by Middle East and Africa, and Latin America forecast to account for 75% of the Americas market. In Nort America, where Teltronic contributed to introduce this technology with the first TETRA deployment in USA, is forecast to grow by nearly 14.9%.
One of the main strengths of TETRA is that it has been improved many times and continuously developed over the 25 years since the first specifications were released. In this sense, speakers pointed out some new performance (Group addressed packet data) and security (Additional Air Interface Encryption algorithms) enhancements that, added to the advances in interworking with 3GPP MC systems, draw a promising future for TETRA.
In addition, manufacturers such as Teltronic continue to work hard on our commitment to TETRA technology, keep on evolving and adding value to offer the market innovative and efficient solutions: Optimized SDM data service, multi-agency infrastructure management capacity, specific data applications for Smart Grids for the Utilities or O&G sectors, or applications for train-to-ground coomunications in Transport environments, among others.
As conclusions, speakers highlighted that “interworking solutions between TETRA and MC Broadband systems will be very important over the medium term and will give users the maximum choice in future migration plans”. However, since there are many users that don’t have requirements for MC broadband services, TETRA will remain as a good choice for these users.
In the meantime, ETSI TC TCCE, 3GPP, TCCA working groups TF, SFPG, CCBG and others keep on working in order to ensure that users have the most relevant mission critical solutions available to them. “TETRA shows every sign of being in use and still under development well towards the end of the next decade”, and since it is showing very good sales growth in many different verticals, “its future seems as bright as ever”.
