Airwave mobile data – providing the gateway

When forces started to use desktop computing 15-20 years ago, the decision over infrastructure was much simpler – typically local area networks (LANs). At the moment, 53 forces are faced with choices and confusion over devices, networks, platforms and which processes to use to mobilise information.

Airwave has spent the last four years developing its Mobile Applications Gateway (MAG) to provide the infrastructure that allows forces total flexibility on device, network and application.

Forces can operate over the MAG using consumer PDAs to TETRA PDAs and hand portable devices, as well as having total choice of bearers including 3G, GPRS or Airwave Tetra.

Airwave’s head of mobile data Roger Marsden said Airwave has taken longer than anyone else because it has built something different to any other supplier. “We want to offer the service a national infrastructure for mobile information, conceptually the same as the Airwave network.”

The Airwave radio network is claimed to be the only successful national communications rollout the service has seen and the company says it will deal with mobile data in the same way. The MAG infrastructure will support 150,000 plus users and is built on carrier grade technology, the same size and resilience as the Airwave radio network. The MAG is supported by a suite of applications that feed into and from force systems, such as Steria Storm, SunGard and legacy systems.

The NPIA’s acceleration package is helping to focus minds, combined with the Flanagan report which encourages the use of common infrastructure and standards.

“Lancashire officers say how wonderful the system is; they can stop someone and check against the PNC and ‘Sleuth’ – Lancashire’s intelligence system. If Merseyside, GMP and Cumbria were on the same system, these checks against all forces’ intelligence systems could be automatic,” added Mr Marsden.

Mr Marsden uses the analogy of the national railway where forces could be building their own lines to different gauges, leaving their trains (or communications) unable to cross borders. Airwave claims its MAG could be the national railway for police communications. “We take care of the gauge, signalling and platforms,” he said.

“The way we understand the acceleration package is to provide a rollout of infrastructure rather than a device or network specific choice. This is not a technology solution but the framework is there to allow the service to reduce bureaucracy, as highlighted by Sir Ronnie Flanagan; reducing actual paperwork by recording the burglary at the complainant’s house, gathering data once instead of using paper and armies of clerical staff to re-record information.”

Airwave’s acceleration package solution has exclusivity over the inclusion of a collaboration with Kelvin Connect, providing a suite of offline forms and PDA notebook where data is stored electronically when the PDA is docked at the end of a shift.

Mr Marsden questioned the use of public networks for mission-critical data. He calls it his “New Year’s Eve syndrome” where millions of people send text messages in celebration yet many are delivered the following lunchtime due to a clog in the network.

“This applied during the London bombing response, where communications closed for at least two hours, purely due to concerned relatives all around the world. Why should the emergency services decide to put mission-critical data over the public network when there is a fully working dedicated emergency services network?”

NPIA has made a significant investment in Ground Based Network Resilience (GBNR) to enhance Airwave’s resilience beyond possible failure. This involves providing a network of radio links between existing base stations using line of sight dish antennas to duplicate the existing ground based fibre-optic cable network links. Therefore, in the event of network failure, these radio-protected sites would continue to provide full network communications for the emergency services.

The Airwave