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Scotland Votes For The Motorola MTH800 Terminal |
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NewsreleaseDate:
2004-04-22
Scotland Votes For The Motorola MTH800 Terminal
Seven Scottish Police Forces Have Decided To Deploy Motorola’s MTH800 Handset To Their Officers On The National Public Safety Network
LONDON, UK - 21st April 2004 - Motorola (NYSE: MOT) today announces that seven Scottish Police Forces have made a joint decision to choose the MTH800, Motorola’s newest Airwave terminal, for their officers to use on the new public safety communications network for Scotland.
This decision is a milestone in terms of collaborative action for Scottish Police Forces in the choice of terminal for their officer’s operational communications. Assistant Chief Constable Ricky Gray commented: "The agreement across seven Scottish Police Forces to purchase Motorola digital radio terminals represents not only a significant collaborative procurement exercise but also a major milestone in the successful implementation of the Airwave Service in Scotland".
Each Force operates independently and faces a variety of policing challenges unique to its particular region. This diversity includes policing the densely populated urban environments of Strathclyde region, protecting the Scottish parliament’s seat of government in the Lothian and Borders region as well as responding to the needs of geographically remote communities by the Northern Constabulary whose territory extends as far as the Shetland Islands.
Enhanced communication possibilities appreciated by users
The rugged flexibility and innovative features of Motorola’s MTH800 with its colour display and integral GPS were a hit with all of the Forces. One of the early forces to go live will be Lothian and Borders. Chief Inspector David Sturrock, was impressed by the capability that the MTH800 offered for enhanced communications. He said, “The thorough evaluation carried out by Lothian and Borders Police and the coordinated approach by all the Scottish Forces has resulted in Motorola being selected as our preferred supplier for hand-portable terminals. This is a significant step forward in our ability to provide enhanced communications for our staff and improve our service to the public.”
Each Force will exploit the flexibility of the MTH800 to fit in with its particular operational needs and work with Motorola to continue the development of special features and applications. Gary Maughan, Motorola’s Director of Public Safety Terminal business in the UK said, “We have been working closely with the Scottish Forces for two years, sharing our ideas with all of them, taking their feedback and developing our terminals’ capabilities with the operational enhancements the forces wanted. This joint decision in favour of the MTH800 is superb news.”
Colour display has a variety of operational uses
The most recent demonstrations of the MTH800 to the Scottish Forces included the display of images captured on a simple digital camera and transmitted live to the terminal. The large, high definition colour display on the MTH800 will in due course enable a wide range of image types to be displayed with exceptional clarity, including mugshots, incident views, digital maps or specialised graphics such as Force logos. During the evaluations in Scotland, the colour display performed extremely well in a variety of environments including the typical sodium lighting of city centres.
Significant user functions have also been enhanced with colour .The battery level icon not only shows the state of charge left in the battery graphically but it changes colour as well. A fully charged battery is shown in green and, progressively, the icon will turn to red when a pre-defined low battery state is reached. Superintendent Jim Johnstone, for Strathclyde, Scotland’s largest force, could see how the MTH800 would contribute to providing a high quality of service delivery by the police. He said, "Strathclyde Police are satisfied that the Motorola MTH800 terminal best meets the communication needs of the Force and will enable our staff to turn the anticipated business benefits of the introduction of the Airwave digital communication service into a high quality policing service to the people of Strathclyde".
Location performance was excellent in Northern latitudes
Operational possibilities are further enhanced with another of the terminal’s features – the integrated GPS receiver. An officer’s location can be accurately plotted by control room staff in order to get a better idea of overall resource deployment. And, in conjunction with the emergency button that sends a high priority call to the control room, an officer’s location can be pinpointed accurately in order to send backup to the incident. The sensitivity of the GPS antenna produced excellent performance in tests carried out in the challenging physical environment of Glasgow’s city centre. Because of the orbit paths, any GPS device operating in northern latitudes will ‘see’ fewer satellites. In spite of this, the location accuracy of the integral GPS was excellent.
‘Best value package’
The decision in favour of the MTH800 brings with it a package of commercial as well as technical benefits for all the Forces. Motorola’s approach is to bring together a variety of options for the customer which recognise the individual needs of Forces and ensures the after-sales support is highly attractive. The package of benefits looks at a five year timescale and offers technical and commercial support including a battery management service that will offer environmentally acceptable battery trade-in and recycling.
This award of the portable terminal contract is the next chapter in a long and successful history of support for public safety radio communications in Scotland by Motorola. The seven Scottish Forces who have collaborated on the decision for the MTH800 are Central Scotland Police, Dumfries & Galloway Police, Fife Constabulary, Lothian & Borders Police, Northern Constabulary, Strathclyde Police and Tayside Police.
The terminal will also be used by officers from the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency (SDEA) who will benefit from the terminal’s capability of fitting into an end-to-end encryption regime to offer high levels of security for operational communications. Forces will be going-live on the Airwave network over the next two years. When fully operational, some seventeen thousand terminals could be in use across Scotland.
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