Telstra has today opened the doors to its new Public Safety Experience Centre, a dedicated space at the Telstra Innovation Centre on Queensland’s Gold Coast, to showcase the latest critical communications technology for police and emergency services in Australia.
“We are thrilled to open this space, to serve as a hub for stakeholders to explore new connectivity solutions, and show our commitment to supporting public safety agencies across Australia,” said Telstra’s Head of Industry and Government, Peggy Renders.
“Over the last years, I’ve seen friends and family in Australia impacted by natural disasters. These events are a reminder of how crucial strong and secure lines of communication are, particularly between frontline responders who are often working in the line of danger.
“The role that emergency responders play responding to these crises’ – along with many other events that impact our community everyday – cannot be overstated and is absolutely critical to keeping our communities safe.”
The Public Safety Experience Centre was officially opened by Queensland Police Minister, Mark Ryan and will offer live demonstrations for visitors to experience first-hand a variety of public safety capabilities enabled by Telstra’s network.
Among the industry-leading technologies on display is a 3GPP compliant Mission Critical Push-to-Talk (MC-PTT) solution supporting a wide range of devices including Samsung, Apple and Sonim.
Supporting this is a 3GPP compliant Interworking Function (IWF) which will enable Public Safety Land Mobile Radio (LMR) networks to interoperate with 4G and 5G carrier solutions.
“If deployed, this technology would change the game for emergency response agencies who want to communicate between users like they are using a radio, but with priority on our commercial network,” said Ms Renders.
“For example, it means a dispatcher could initiate an MCPTT group call with an officer and other responders at a scene all on different devices and leveraging the IWF platform. It means faster, more seamless and secure sharing of information to better respond in an emergency scenario.
“We also have a simulation of Telstra LANES, a world-first mobile broadband data capability designed specifically to give emergency services prioritised access on our commercial 4G network.”
This technology provides emergency services guaranteed throughput to use data intensive applications, such as video streaming, so they can improve their operations, from situational awareness, to officer safety, command and control.
“Another cornerstone to our work with public safety agencies is our focus on network resiliency,” said Ms Renders.
“When it comes to public safety, it doesn’t matter what use case you explore, resiliency is paramount and that’s why we’re doing more work than ever – across our technology, architecture and network operations – to prepare for if things go wrong.
“It includes making our equipment more resilient in disaster-prone areas, to adding more redundancy.
Queensland Police Minister, Mark Ryan said that with technology evolving so quickly, it was important that frontline emergency services operations stay abreast of the latest developments.
“The Queensland Police Service leads the nation and the world in many areas as early adopters of new technologies,” said the Minister.
“The new Public Safety Experience Centre will provide police with another important avenue for ensuring they are appropriately informed about technologies that may enhance the Queensland Police Service’s operational capabilities.
“It’s great to see that Telstra recognised that Queensland, and in particular the Gold Coast, was the best location for the new national Public Safety Experience Centre.
“It’s particularly appropriate due to the fact that Queensland’s exposure to severe weather events means its front-line emergency services officers and volunteers are the busiest and best in the nation.”
Ms Renders said “we are proud to partner closely with emergency services across Australia to provide leading network support, including most recently with the deployment of the Tasmanian Government Radio Network.
“However critical communications is relevant to many industries and, while the capability being demonstrated at Telstra’s Innovation Centre is purpose built for Public Safety, we are also looking forward to showing this to other customers in our industry verticals including Mining, Construction and Utilities.”
The Public Safety Experience Centre is open to visitors by appointment.
