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Ambulance award is good news…
I start this month by congratulating O2 and Sungard Vivista on their good news concerning the roll out of the Airwave service to Ambulance Trusts in England. As I understand it, between the two organisations, the Trusts will be provided with the Airwave service together with mobile and handportable terminals and the Sungard Vivista Integrated Communications Control System. Furthermore, Trusts will receive integration and migration services and ongoing support of the TETRA terminals. This award is good news and represents a significant step forward in ambulance communications and emergency services interoperability. BAPCO’s commercial membership at large looks forward to providing the Ambulance Service with the additional support it will inevitably need as it seeks to implement the changes required to make the best use of its investment.
It is generally accepted that the Ambulance Service has been at the forefront of the use of mobile data over the years. While others have explored the opportunities for delivering benefits through enhanced use of mobile data we have witnessed the arrival of Project MESA on the scene. Now, this project has been aired on a number of occasions in BAPCO circles, but it is only now that it is coming to our shores that I realise many of us haven’t really grasped what it is about. OK, here it is, Project MESA is an international partnership producing globally applicable technical specifications for digital mobile broadband technology, aimed initially at the sectors of public safety and disaster response. It is the result of a collaboration agreement between Europe’s ETSI and the US Telecommunications Industry Association wherein key players can contribute jointly to develop new specifications through a Partnership Project, originally known as the Public Safety Partnership Project (PSPP). The current partnership agreement for Project MESA was ratified in January 2001 in the City of Mesa, Arizona. So now you know and if you want to find out more then, like me, go to www.projectmesa.org! The relevance of this is that BAPCO will host an estimated 50 Project MESA members during the period 25th to 28th October 2005, in Edinburgh. BAPCO’s MESA representative and Chair of the Project’s System Specification Group, Phil Kidner, and CAG are working up ways in which commercial members can get involved in supporting this event; we will let you know more as soon as we can.
CAG has generally kept in contact with the Commercial Membership through an email address list that is maintained by our Secretary. The list is open to all commercial members and we regularly invite you to join it. If you wish to check whether you are on it, then please contact david.king@marconi.com.
Peter Prater
Chair Commercial Advisory Group
