Update on UK's Emergency Services Network (ESN) from #BAPCO2019

I have discussed about the UK's Emergency Services Network (ESN) multiple times but I manged to hear about the progress first hand this week. Bryan Clark, ESN Programme Director, Home Office gave a keynote address at BAPCO on Day 2 and the title of his presentation was "2019: The year vision becomes reality"

British APCO or BAPCO Annual Conference and Exhibition 2019 was going to be a big launchpad for the ESN network. The ESN LinkedIn post said "Representatives from ESN and EE will be on hand to discuss coverage and ESN Assure. See an installation of the ESN Gateway solution within a police car, plus a live demonstration showing how ESN coverage can be extended from a vehicle into a building. We’ll also have a ‘Motorola Zone’ where you can watch demos of Kodiak and the ESN self-service portal – and a large touchscreen demo of the Samsung ESN Galaxy"

Bryan started by cracking a joke about people referring to 'ESN' as 'ES When' programme because it has been delayed multiple times. He said straight in the beginning that he going to talk about what the ESN programme is doing now and what comes next.

He started with this short video, embedded below but detailed info available on this LinkedIn post

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So here is a short summary of the talk:

• There are roughly 350,000 customers of this service
• There are 137 separate organizations that will take advantage of this new this new technology. 
• There are couple of vehicles in the display area (pic on the top and video below) and roughly 50,000 vehicles that need to have a kit
• Over 100 aircraft need to have an air network access that currently isn't there. 
• There are nearly 30 direct suppliers to the program and that doesn't include the whole supply chain through each of those suppliers.
• Looking at the coverage, there is a commitment to providing a signal along half a million (0.5 million) kilometers of roads in England, Scotland & Wales. It extends 12 nautical miles out to sea and 10,000 feet in the air right across England, Scotland & Wales.
• In London alone there are over 400 kilometres of tunnels that were actually almost finished cabling out.
• 300 masts are being built as part of the ESN programme to extend services into remote areas.
• EE has extended their network by adding 700 additional masts. 
• Thousands of special locations will need to have effective access to ESN network
• ESN is a large programme so it's hardly surprising that it's very late. It's Bryan's job over the past 10 months to work out how to get it back on track. 
• People are going through quite a detailed review of where ESN has got to in terms of next steps. 
• The programme now has a very clear and approved plan to complete the technical element of the work, most of it should be done by late summer next year.
• One of the first products, Assure, is a way of testing the effectiveness of the network in the field. 
• A demonstration of Push-To-Talk (PTT) on a 4G network will be demoed within 3 weeks.
• This is the first generation end-to-end solution
• Emergency services is critical national infrastructure so any new solution can only replace the legacy once we are absolutely confident that we've got an effective replacement
• Even though the technical piece is quite challenging, when you compare it to the business change that follows, the technical part looks pretty simple. 
• To ensure that everything works effectively operationally, plans are in place but more detailed plans are going to follow in the coming three to four months.
• Individual components are already being tested in the field
• Programme deployment should start by the end of 2019 in terms of having basically completed laying the core components and a clear plan will be in place for how to test in an operational context. 
• The ESN programme is not only responsible for the replacement solution but also for operations to date based on the Airwave contract with Motorola currently
• The number one priority is to provide critical voice communications of sufficient quality that people can rely on in the field and enable them to move away from the TETRA technology that served them so well. So we aren't going anywhere until we've got rock solid critical voice communications. It's our number one priority, simply because people's lives depend on it.

The following are various videos from the ESN demo area. The Gateway device (which is a mobile small cell) is supplied by Parallel Wireless*.



In case you missed BAPCO, Ken Rehbehn, a very well known Industry Analyst who works as a Principal Analyst at Critical Communications Insights and is also Montgomery County Firefighter/EMT, shared his observations and reflections from conference. Very grateful for his interview which is embedded below



Further Reading:

• Building a new critical communications network that keeps you safe - Bryan Clark, Programme Director, Emergency Services Network

Related posts:

• 3G4G Small Cells Blog: Meshing for BYOC (Bring Your Own Coverage)
• The 3G4G Blog: Quick tutorial on Mobile Network Sharing Options
• The 3G4G Blog: A practical use of MOCN in ESN
• The 3G4G Blog: EE's vision of Ultra-Reliable Emergency Network
• The 3G4G Blog: Update from 3GPP on LTE & 5G Mission Critical Communications

*Full Disclosure: I work for Parallel Wireless as a Senior Director in Strategic Marketing. This blog is maintained in my personal capacity and expresses my own views, not the views of my employer or anyone else. Anyone who knows me well would know this.