The Cork City Marathon has benefited from seamless communications through using Tetra Ireland’s national mission-critical communications network. Authorities and volunteers communicated using a single event talk-group with a total of 35 TETRA radios used for the event.
Tetra Ireland's Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) GPS tracking solution covered the 26-mile route to ensure safety for almost 10,000 entrants and their spectators, with Cork City Council, Cork City Fire, Civil Defence and volunteers from St John Ambulance, Irish Red Cross and Order of Malta reporting no issues with the communications from Tetra Ireland.
The network provider also gave a live demonstration of the AVL GPS tracking solution, which allows remote receiving of GPS asset locations carried over the secure Tetra Ireland packet data network, for all the organisations involved. The technology uses the TETRA Ireland radio network and existing TETRA Ireland/Terrafix AVLS system for real-time tracking and management of personnel and vehicles with GPS enabled TETRA mobile or hand-portables.
The recorded location data can be stored within the tracking unit or it may be transmitted to a central location data base. This allows assets’ locations to be displayed against a map backdrop in real-time and is ideal for use in strategic asset deployment.
“This allowed one single communications platform across the whole event for everyone involved,” said Lindsey Harris, account manager for Tetra Ireland. “Be it the control room or the medics and volunteers from St John Ambulance, Irish Red Cross and Order of Malta, who were then able to track the lead car and the ambulances involved in the event...”
Tetra Ireland discussed requirements before the event with Cork City Council, Cork City Fire, Civil Defence so that medical cover could be ensured with St John Ambulance, Irish Red Cross and Order of Malta. Additional Motorola Solutions MTP850 handsets were provided by Tetra Ireland to the voluntary groups. A combination of both Motorola Solutions radios and Sepura STP9000 as used by the Civil Defence.
Changes to the network before the event started were not required and event overseers’ feedback indicated that coverage was adequate in areas of known UHF blackspots. This year's event used only TETRA radios to resolve problems experienced in previous years with UHF radios. The Tetra Ireland network covers 97.1 per cent of landmass in the Republic of Ireland.
“They’ve had issues on some parts of the route in previous years using UHF radios, which across TETRA they didn’t have, so the same issues didn’t present themselves,” added Harris. “One of the other points that was noted was just how clear the communications were in terms of clarity on the voice calls.”
