Use of TETRA: what has worked well and what has gone wrong - part 1

Al joined Highways England in 2005 as an assistant regional service manager, managing regional supplier technology maintenance services at outstations.

The last decade has seen him fulfil roles in project, contract and operational management, overseeing the service delivery of mission critical technology tools on behalf of the Highways England Traffic Officer Service; predominantly The Tetra radio service (Airwave) and hardware and a business command & control system.

Previously he was a member of the Home Office non-blue light Emergency Services Mobile Communication Programme (ESMCP) stakeholders working group.

Robin is an independent government advisor and technology advocate. He has advised government bodies, and many global public safety agencies, on the deployment of large scale, leading-edge technology projects and programmes. He has a detailed understanding of critical communications operational systems, LTE, TETRA, broadband and complex control room integration.

Frédéric Jans-Cooremans is a Project Manager at the STIB, Public Transport Company of Brussels. After a long experience in radio matters, he joined the organisation 11 years ago.

Working in a group of signaling experts, his radio knowledge was used to write the tender of a driverless metro system based on radio interchange. As a result, he took part in the launch of the Spectrum Users Group of the UITP and took a role in the working group at ETSI to share a frequency band with the ITS.

He was recently involved in the ECC mandate from the Working Group Frequency Management to provide a secure frequency band for CBTC, processing the highest priority of use as a result of ITS and Wifi band extension demands.

He has moved from day-to-day involvement in the operational communications between the STIB vehicles and dispatching to the new Tetra project. Aiming to optimise and improve the radio network of the company, he is building the biggest private Tetra network in Belgium.

He is also responsible for the coherent use of radio waves by the organisation and acts as an interface for radio matters.