An overview of the TETRA market Down Under
Whilst mining, oil and gas has been the catalyst for the TETRA growth in Australia, representing some 50 to 60 per cent of the total market, other verticals such as hospitality, large shopping centres, education campuses, hospitals, utilities and transpor
The Australasian TETRA Forum has been established for over 12 years and has a growing membership base in Australia that includes major vendors, integrators and distributors that have, over the years, provided a unique platform to promote TETRA technology in the Australasian market place and raise the overall profile and knowledge of the TETRA technology including future development with the support of the TCCA.
Globally TETRA remains a dominant digital technology for police and public safety users whereas in Australia there is a different story.
TETRA, when introduced in Australia in 2007, was limited by spectrum constraints. The majority of systems implemented on the Australian mainland comprised single-site TETRA systems that were restricted to the 800 Mhz band.
Due to the spectrum limitation users requiring multi-site wide area networks opted for P25 technology that had no spectrum limitations and was available in UHF 400 Mhz band. The early adopters of TETRA in Australia in the 800 Mhz band included mining, industrial and petro chemical plants as well hospitality and security. Most of these were single-site TETRA operations.
In 2010/2011 the Australian Government introduced a new UHF band plan that cleared the way for multi-site TETRA network operations in the 400 Mhz band. This provided a market stimulus and renewed interest for TETRA that prompted major growth particularly within the huge Australian mining, oil & gas resources’ sector which started to implement multi-site wide area TETRA networks for existing and newly built large open cut mining sites, freight rail operations, LNG extraction, processing plants and long distance gas pipeline projects. In fact, IP-based TETRA became the technology of choice in this market sector.
Multi- billion dollar mining projects need multi site wide area mission critical radio networks that provided a comprehensive set of applications, connectivity, roaming and voice + data capability along hundreds of kilometres of coverage that involved many radio sites.
In the past five years massive mining and resources projects utilizing TETRA included the Gorgon LNG project, the Roy Hill Iron Ore project, the Wheatstone project, the Queensland LNG project and others representing investment of over AUD100 billion where feature-rich mission critical radio communication is vital for the construction, operation and safety of personnel for many years.
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Source: TETRAToday
