around applications that might be suitable for use in the
public safety environment.
He illustrated this through the mention of a ve-language
‘translator’ app demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics
Show in Las Vegas earlier this year. e city of Houston in
Texas has about 174 languages being spoken, he said; “think
of the potential benets from a 911 perspective” if the app
could be leveraged for use by the emergency services.
From ‘ES When’ to ESN
Having witnessed Parkinson’s FirstNet presentation on day
one, it would be fair to say that a good way to describe it was
‘quietly exuberant’. e start of day two also witnessed its
own keynote session, this time from ESN programme director
Bryan Clark, someone whose tone could best be described as
cautiously optimistic, following the emergency reboot of the
UK public safety broadband project in the middle of last year.
His theme was ‘2019: the year vision becomes reality’.
While not necessarily giving away anything that visitors to
BAPCO 2019 didn’t already know (although there were some
newsy nuggets in there, which we’ll get to later), Clark did
prove himself to be eminently quotable. More to the point,
he has also clearly been brought onboard as a capable
and reassuring presence, communicating both realism and
self-awareness, as well as a sense of actually being relaxed
within the role.
He began his presentation by reiterating the reason for the
roll-out of ESN in the rst place, focusing on the benets
it will bring to emergency services personnel. He did this
in part through the use of a piece of video marketing,
the voiceover for which he later revealed was provided by
Hollywood actor – and frequent EE collaborator – Kevin
Bacon. From here, he moved on to explain why the project
is currently so behind in relation to the original anticipated
roll-out date.
“It’s a big programme,” he said, “involving 350,000
customers, 137 separate user organisations, 50,000 vehicles
that we have to kit out, more than 100 aircraft, and nearly
30 direct suppliers not including the rest of the supply chain.
One of the things I learned as an engineer is that before you
do anything, you need to work out how big it’s going to be.
e plain fact of the matter is that it’s hardly surprising that
it’slate.”
BAPCO Review
I think we can say we’re in the fun
phase of ESN now, moving from the
theoretical to the practical. We’re starting
to gain velocity, moving into the
next stage of the work
He continued: “It’s been my job over the past 10 months
to work out how to get the roll-out back on track. We’ve
been doing that through a detailed review of where we’ve got
to, and where the next steps need to be. e programme now
has an approved, very clear plan to complete the technical
element of the work, most of which should be done by late
summer next year.
“I think we can say we’re in the fun phase now, moving
from the theoretical to the practical. We’re starting to gain
velocity, moving into the next stage of the work, which is how
can we assure ourselves that this works eectively from an
operational point of view?”
Clark followed this with a discussion of the recently
deployed ESN Assure coverage testing solution, as well as
news of the network’s rst planned critical PTT call, taking
place an anticipated three weeks after his presentation. He
also said the programme should be in a “great place” by the
end of this calendar year, having both completed the core
components of the project and developed a “clear plan” for
testing in an operational context.
Without wanting to labour the comparison between
FirstNet and the Emergency Services Network too much, one
of the core dierences between the two programmes is the
latter’s reliance – at least at the beginning – on proprietary
technology rather than open standards. is is a situation that
has now been rectied, with the UK Home Oce moving
away from its original bespoke solution and towards Kodiak, a
Motorola-owned hybrid product that will provide a missioncritical
push-to-talk service using both narrowband and
broadband (MCPTT over the ESN network) in the interim
period prior to the shutdown of Airwave.
With that in mind, and as compelling as Clark’s rst
ocial BAPCO appearance was, perhaps the highlight of
the show from an ESN perspective was the opportunity
to view the Kodiak interface (as installed on a Samsung
handheld smart device) in person at the Home Oce
stand. is was also accompanied by an equally compelling,
apparently functional, EE gateway device, mounted in
the back of a police car. e picture, it would appear, is
becoming clearer all the time.
One core area in which the ESN discussion is still ongoing,
however, is in relation to air-to-ground coverage, something
that was addressed by product director Steve Whatson as part
of the ‘Options for A2G communications in LTE’ session on
day one. (e session also included Hans Petter Naper, chief
engineer of the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection).
Speaking of the task in hand, Whatson – who began his
presentation by agging up that the A2G device procurement
process is still ongoing – said: “We currently have 78 sites,
with about 83 per cent coverage above 1,000 feet. ere’s
about 115 aircraft in total using the network, including
the National Police Air Service, air ambulances, Maritime
and Coastguard Agency, and the Ministry of Defence, with
Ed Parkinson
discussed FirstNet
year one
April Supplement 2019 @CritCommsToday 5