Airwave launches ‘Smart Mobile’

It has been designed to complement the TETRA two-way radio voice and data service Airwave operates on behalf of the emergency services in the UK.

Operating as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), Airwave Smart Mobile provides access to one of the UK’s largest mobile networks and for the first time will also offer the ability to connect from a smartphone to a talkgroup on Airwave’s Emergency Services Network (ESN).

This has been made possible by Airwave’s new ‘push to talk’ (PTT) application Enhance. Through this, users can give permission to extend their talkgroup communication beyond existing Airwave Service users.

“There’s no need for groups like these to hold a TEA2 (TETRA Encryption Algorithm 2) security licence or implement additional infrastructure to use the Airwave Smart Mobile service. Enabling groups such as these to interoperate with the emergency services when necessary means incidents, actions and responses can be far better coordinated and managed,” explained Airwave’s chief operating officer Richard Bobbett.

Airwave Smart Mobile also has the option to include Airwave’s Pronto suite of mobile data policing applications.

Airwave says the mobile communications service has been designed specifically to meet the current and future needs of public service organisations.

“We have designed Airwave Smart Mobile to help the public service community meet the challenges they face today around operational resource management, cost control, efficiency and effectiveness, while coping with ever-decreasing budgets,” added Mr Bobbett. “It will also allow more users to access and benefit from the Airwave service.”

Going forward, Airwave says it will continue to provide mission-critical and non-mission-critical services to the emergency services, as well as to the wider public service community.

“As we speak there are more applications and services in the pipeline addressing the challenges in the mobilisation of command and control, duty of care for both employee and employer, to name but a few,” said Mr Bobbett.

The service join Airwave’s recently-launched location tracking service Collaborate and 4GMax high-speed data service.