Mission requirements
While aspects such as cost, spectrum efficiency and the ability to enable better ways of working for police officers were all important, Dimitrov points out that they were not necessarily the guiding principles behind the contract.
‘Sometime in police life cost is not the primary consideration,’ he explains. ‘It is about helping to save lives by giving police officers a tool that is their lifeline and that enables them to do their job more efficiently. But of course it is beneficial to have a radio system with built in GPS that enables us to track where the officers are and identify who they are from the radio ID.’
When it came to choosing a digital radio standard, Dimitrov says the tender was open to any system and all manufacturers. Generally, those European countries that have made the switch to digital radio systems have opted for TETRA or Tetrapol with the odd one or two choosing P25.
Bulgaria did have a TETRA system in use with certain specialist units and Dimitrov explains that one of the key requirements for the NPS contract was that the winning solution had to be able to connect to those TETRA radios, as well as the radios used by the fire brigades, ambulance service, civil defence force and so on.
A sophisticated encryption system and user authorisation protocol was also a prerequisite. Dimitrov notes wryly that Balkan criminals had got rather good at listening in to the police analogue radios and any replacement system had to put an emphatic stop to that. Another vitally important requirement was that the Bulgarian Police expect to use the radio system for around 15 years. The MoI therefore wanted a reliable supplier with a sustainable business that would be around for that length of time to support the system. It also had to have the right technical, repair and training expertise in place to fulfil that need. In addition, the system had to be easily upgradable to keep pace with developments in modern digital radio systems.
