Re: TETRA encryption

From: Lassi Hippeläinen (lahippel_at_ieee.orgasm-research.invalid)
Date: 05/07/03 

Date: Wed, 07 May 2003 07:37:28 GMT

Jim Watt wrote:

> TETRA is currently focused on providing a system for the police
> and emergency services.
>
> GSM is certainly outside my present competence to monitor.

TETRA and GSM sprouted on the same ground. The idea was to use as much
GSM components as possible, so that manufacturing costs of expensive
closed group radio networks could be brought down. There was a serious
need to convert even emergency networks to digital. Security is one of
them, portable computers with IP stacks another.

> Neither IMHO provide the same level of operational use to the
> man on the street who needs fast reliable communication.

TETRA has unique capabilities to form user groups. By default all
services use the same base station network, but cannot see each other.
However, it is possible to form ad hoc groups across several emergency
services, so that they can cooperate in a catastrophe. To extend range,
a TETRA phone can act as a relay for other phones. No analogue system
comes even close.

When the ship Estonia sunk in the Baltic Sea in 1994, 852 people were
drowned. There were five separate emergency services in the rescue
operation, with five incompatible radio systems, and they could talk to
each other only via a landline telephone patch, and the chief of the
operation could not work in real time. It was a lesson that influenced
TETRA features.

<...>
> I believe that our emergency services were one of the first to test
> TETRA and it looks like others are going to fall into the same
> expensive trap.

TETRA is cheap. The same infrastructure and phones work for all
services. (Don't compare it to an old analogue system of a single
service, compare it to separate digital replacements for each service!)
TETRA cannot be as cheap as GSM, because the phones are more complex,
and their production quantities are lower. To recover some of the cost,
it has been discussed that TETRA could be opened to commercial use, e.g.
fleet management.

-- Lassi

Relevant Pages

  • Re: TETRA encryption
    ... TETRA and GSM sprouted on the same ground. ... TETRA has unique capabilities to form user groups. ... a TETRA phone can act as a relay for other phones. ... There were five separate emergency services in the rescue ...
    (comp.security.misc)
  • Re: TETRA encryption
    ... TETRA and GSM sprouted on the same ground. ... TETRA has unique capabilities to form user groups. ... a TETRA phone can act as a relay for other phones. ... There were five separate emergency services in the rescue ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Re: TETRA encryption
    ... TETRA is currently focused on providing a system for the police ... GSM is certainly outside my present competence to monitor. ... I believe that our emergency services were one of the first to test ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Re: TETRA encryption
    ... TETRA is currently focused on providing a system for the police ... GSM is certainly outside my present competence to monitor. ... I believe that our emergency services were one of the first to test ...
    (alt.computer.security)
  • Re: TETRA encryption
    ... TETRA is currently focused on providing a system for the police ... GSM is certainly outside my present competence to monitor. ... I believe that our emergency services were one of the first to test ...
    (comp.security.misc)
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