A new radio network for emergency responders should already be up and running in Canterbury, with one in Wellington hot on its heels, but the rollout is still months away.
The previous Labour government signed off on the new Public Safety Network solution in August 2022 at a cost of $1.4 billion over 10 years.
Next Generation Critical Communications, a business unit within the police, is responsible for developing the network on behalf of Fire and Emergency, Police, Hato Hone St John and Wellington Free Ambulance.
The network is made up of three main solutions: Cellular, Personal Alerting, and Land Mobile Radio.
The latter is the core of the new network, a new land mobile radio service, which was supposed to already be up and running in Canterbury, with Wellington soon to be completed. Tasman was supposed to then follow in September.
Early iterations of the plan also had a pilot site in operation from later 2023.
Next Generation Critical Communications director Steve Ferguson acknowledged there had been delays so far, but that overall progress was good.
“Testing of the core network in a lab environment is well advanced to prove the network design works and can integrate into the emergency services’ systems,” he said.
“From the middle of this year, there will be a small-scale fully functioning Land Mobile Radio network in South Canterbury with eight new digital radio sites available for the emergency services to carry out testing using operational scenarios, including to test new radios and devices.”
The new network promises to be built with sufficient resilience to allow emergency services to communicate in the event of a significant natural disaster. It would operate via a ‘push to talk’ function which would also provide location services.
State-owned enterprise Kordia and Christchurch technology company Tait Communications won the contract to build the new network made up of more than 400 radio sites.
“The build programme is underway around the country, and while there have been delays to the delivery of the first regions in the schedule, Tait Kordia Joint Venture has committed to completing the overall regional network delivery programme to meet the contracted due date of late 2026,” Ferguson said.
Kordia has faced internal disruptions when the first site in Canterbury was due to be implemented.
In March its chief executive, Shaun Rendell, was forced to unexpectedly quit because of an accident, with chief operating officer Jason Fullerton-Smith covering him while on sick leave.
In April a director of Kordia, Neil Livingston, was appointed interim chief executive, with the board planning to conduct an extensive executive search process for a new permanent chief executive.
However, the delays were signalled well before this.
In an August 2023 briefing, officials told the then-Police Minister Ginny Andersen Crown Infrastructure Partners had been involved in an attempt to get the programme back on track.
“NGCC and CIP have been working closely with Tait Kordia to progress the Land Mobile Radio Solution since signing the contract on 23 August 2023.
“Over the last six months a significant amount of effort has gone into working with Tait Kordia to support them to deliver the agreed contract deliverables for the project.”
Next Generation and Crown Infrastructure Partners also asked for a meeting with the relevant oversight ministers to “help navigate the issues outlined above and support NGCC and CIP to progress a successful way forward to ensure there are no further delays to the project”.
Ferguson said the design phase took Tait Kordia longer than expected due to its highly technical and complex nature.
“The first phase of the project was to design the Land Mobile Radio network, considering things like spectrum use as well as the number and physical location of sites across New Zealand. This required a large amount of highly technical and complex planning to ensure the emergency services get a Land Mobile Radio service they can rely on from ‘go-live’.
“The network design phase took Tait Kordia Joint Venture’s radio engineers more time than anticipated to achieve the necessary high degree of certainty and confidence that the network would meet the emergency services’ requirements. The network design is complete and is now enabling the current site acquisition and build phase.”
An earlier briefing in December 2022 mentioned risks to the rollout because of the availability of spectrum (radio frequency) and resourcing challenges.
Estimates are that the radio communications network currently used by New Zealand’s emergency services frontline responders won’t last past next year.
“Over the past 20 years, the requirement for a refresh of the communications technology and infrastructure has been deferred resulting in a material infrastructure deficit. Emergency services agencies have worked hard to extend the life of the existing radio network; however, it has reached the point where replacement can no longer be avoided. The existing radio network must be replaced,” officials wrote in a briefing to Police Minister Mark Mitchell late last year.
“Beyond 2025 the existing communications network will have degraded to an extent that the likelihood of failure and resultant loss of availability to emergency services presents an unacceptable risk.”
Ferguson said Next Generation had undertaken work with the existing agencies to ensure their radio services remained fit for purpose until the new network was finished.
Aside from the new Land Mobile Radio, the plan is also to procure Compact Rapid Deployables, which provide temporary cellular coverage when networks are unavailable.
“Compact Rapid Deployables are being built specifically for Public Safety Network users use during major emergencies such as Cyclone Gabrielle. They are small mobile units, and designed to be easily deployed by a single person in less than 15 minutes.
“They will be stored across the country in strategically selected geographic locations ready for deployment as required,” an NGCC briefing explains.
Hourua, a One NZ and Spark joint venture, is contracted to deliver the cell service aspect of the programme, which is on time and on budget.
The service will mean emergency responders’ cellular communications get priority over other users when cellular networks are congested or degraded.
A personal alerting service provided over a stabilised paging network is also part of the plan.
Twenty years of kicking the can down the road.
Let’s hope that the team that designed and built this system comprised equally of “young guns” with new ideas and “old timers” who know the reality’s of what’s required for the thing to work for all those who will be connected. Who will train them and keep them trained and tested?
Why not a dedicated FM radio frequency for emergencies, with broadcasts every ten minutes or as required and accessed by inexpensive small portable radios – all households to have one?
The radios able to be charged manually if necessary.