The UK’s first trial of TETRA digital radio communications for a private radio system has been announced today by AirRadio, a communications provider for the air transport industry.
The trial will also involve aviance UK, a provider of ground-handling services at airports. The trial has been made possible by the allocation of temporary digital bandwidth in the UHF frequency band by the UK’s radio communications regulator, OFCOM.
AirRadio will install and operate the temporary digital trunk to assess the business case for private TETRA systems as well as technical issues such as the radio coverage that would be experienced in a permanent installation. aviance UK will trial digital trunk radios as part of day-to-day operations alongside its current equipment.
Brian Nicholson, Managing Director of AirRadio, commented, “Unlike other EU countries, the only spectrum released to-date for digital radio in the UK has been for public access national systems. This is the first occasion that spectrum has been made available here for a private, on-site system.”
Infrastructure will be sourced from Team simoco,which has a distribution agreement for digital radio infrastructure with ETELM in France. AirRadio will use terminals sourced from Sepura and Motorola in the UK.