Emergency communications go from two-way to ‘Star Trek’

REMEMBER two-way radios? Those uncool communications devices some of us used before smartphones? They may seem like a throwback to the 20th century, but the technology formally known as professional mobile radio is not only alive and loud, but also about to lead emergency services into the 21st century.

At this week’s Critical Communications World conference in Amsterdam, the technology’s pioneer, Motorola Solutions, unveiled a range of devices that will blend it with the LTE networks synonymous with 4G data services.

“Not only is PMR not dead, it’s thriving,” says Jack Molloy, the company’s executive vicepresident for worldwide sales. “We have customers around the world not only today, but for next week, next month, and signing up for support agreements running up to 2039. It’s still a very viable industry.”

An example is Seattle, regarded as one of the most progressive technology hubs in the world: it views mobile radio as a critical component of the smart city of tomorrow.

The second, more visionary technology that is about to make a startling bedfellow of professional mobile radio is virtual reality. In one of the highlights of the conference, Motorola demonstrated a new system that allows for a combination of virtual reality, drone technology and smart glasses to be linked with the public safety command centres of the near future.

“Across the world, emergency communications are moving into a more mobile environment,” says Molloy. “Reams of data are now available, and we think the power lies first and foremost in the software used to manage command centres, particularly around the question: how do you aggregate all that data into useful information?”

The scenario demonstrated this week showed how a police officer investigating a potential crime could be equipped with smart devices that allow command centre personnel to join in the chase through virtual reality. Sensors on the body are linked to a drone using artificial intelligence to follow the officer and relay video and location information to the command centre.

This may sound like science fiction, but change is nothing new in this arena.

“In the last 10 years we saw most customers shift from analogue to digital, and there’s no question it introduced new dimensions to voice systems,” says Shimon Dick, head of Motorola Solutions for sub-Saharan Africa. “These range from greater efficiencies of frequency, which is a very limited resource, to quality of voice and data capabilities.”

And now, LTE is introducing yet another dimension, allowing mobile radio devices to use both traditional “push-to-talk” two-way radios and the data capabilities of high-speed networks.

“The main story is the ability to keep communicating while a major event is happening, whether a soccer game with 50 000 people or a terror attack where the mobile network is overloaded,” says Dick. “And then there is the security of wireless communications.”

Molloy says hardware will become less important as devices are distributed about the body of a first responder, from a shoulder-mounted video camera to portable Wi-Fi hot spots to a wearable power supply.

So the traditional radio may well disappear as a visible hardware tool, but the technology behind it will become more important than ever before.

Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @art2gee