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“You can see it also in the monthly prices: the old monthly price for a device was €75. So the users are on the one hand happy with the new prices – but, on the other hand, we have the problem with that comparison to the mobile telephone. But that we have to handle!” After more that a year since the analogue system was shut down, how satisfied is Zaddach with the TETRA project and digital radio? “From the operation point of view and the maintenance point of view, it runs very smoothly”, he says. “We’ve had stable operation since the first day we switched on the central system. “We had some work to do on the central system – we had to migrate new firmware versions and so on – but it didn’t matter in those first times of the project because the migration of the end user devices was later. “I always mention the long migration phase: that was also a good strategy, I think, because we could address all the specific user requirements and talk to all the different user groups – they all have special requirements. “And we had good co-operation with the project team of Motorola. It was nice work together.” Mapping tasks on the apronWith the TETRA radio system now in full operation, the IT department is tackling a further step – to integrate it more fully with the airport’s IT systems. Michael Zaddach highlights a software application called Airport Map, which provides on-screen visibility of the apron and aircraft stands. The aim is to match communications to the airport’s processes, using real-time information about the location of aircraft and vehicles on the apron. “If you want to establish now a voice connection to any people who are working here on the apron – a loader or anyone else – you have to know his call number and you can call him”, he explains. “But we know exactly which person is dispatched to this aircraft handling. And if the system knows it, we can give the user of this application the possibility to make up a short context menu here and to switch to voice communication. We can then give him a pull-down menu with all the different people working on handling this aircraft, and he can call them directly, by an interface to the TETRA system..” Using new applications developed in-house, managers will be able to click on a context menu to see a Gantt chart showing all processes that are running on the aircraft stand. With a mobile PC connected via the wireless LAN, they will be able to view activity at the stand and to set up a voice connection. “We are right now working on this interface to integrate voice communication in this application”, Zaddach says. “We have the APIs to the TETRA system to do this.” Lessons from a pilot networkRobert Wondra, who leads a six-strong TETRA project team, remembers that TETRA has been under consideration at the airport since as far back as 1999. “In 2002 we had the first contacts with other airports”, he says. “In the year 2004–5 we rented a little system from Damm for one carrier – a very good system. We bought some radios, a few from Motorola, a few from Sepura, from Nokia and so on, and we used them ourselves. That was the first part. “On the second part, we had three companies which clean the aeroplanes and one of these user groups had a very big interest to get the new, lighter radios. The old ones were very heavy! So we said, ‘If you want, you can be a pilot user on our test system’. They said yes – and suddenly we had bought, I think, 30 radios from Motorola, MTH 800, and had given them to the aircraft cleaners.” On the buttonThis early experience was of great value in planning the main radio project. “If you make one little failure in a big project, it’s a big failure – and we made some failures in the little system”, Wondra admits. “Here’s one example”, he continues, unclipping his Motorola handportable from his belt. He points out the orange emergency button on the top, next to the antenna. Because of its experience with the experimental system, the airport does not use this. Instead, to report an emergency you must now use the keypad to dial 112, the ordinary pan-European emergency number. This change was made because of the way people were using the lightweight TETRA radios. Often they would reach into their pocket for the radio, grasping it by the antenna. And sometimes their thumb, pointing downward, would depress the emergency button for long enough to trigger an alarm. So after consultations with the airport emergency services, the team decided to disable the alarm button and to rely on the 112 number instead. “You press 112 and push the PTT and you make a private call”, Robert Wondra explains. “This is very good because someone who needs our fire department, emergencies and so on, only has to type three numbers – 112.
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