Building a National Digital Trunking Shared Network Is Key to Enhancing Emergency Communication Capabilities
Wan Gang, Minister of Science and Technology, recently stated that disaster prevention and mitigation are among the key areas of livelihood-related science and technology, and the development of early warning and forecasting systems for earthquakes, floods, and other disasters should be accelerated.
Recently, the Fujian Provincial Radio Management Office held a review meeting on digital trunking frequency band planning, and the Plan passed expert review. Provinces and autonomous regions including Hubei, Hainan, and Xinjiang have all carried out planning for digital trunking frequency bands. What is the socioeconomic significance of digital trunking frequency band planning for each province, what principles should be followed in digital trunking planning, and what significance does digital trunking construction hold for enhancing emergency communication capabilities? Regarding these questions, the reporter interviewed Mr. Li Jinliang, a professor-level senior engineer from the 7th Research Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation.
Digital Trunking Coordinates Social Demands
Reporter: Hubei, Hainan, Xinjiang and other provinces and autonomous regions have all carried out planning for digital trunking frequency bands. What is the background behind the current frequency band planning for digital trunking in various provinces?
Li Jinliang: Society is an organic whole, and many social activities require coordinated efforts across multiple departments. A market economy even more so requires social division of labor and cooperation.
In emergency actions such as disaster rescue and relief, joint operations are needed from government, public security, firefighting, transportation, and health emergency departments. In the original independent private mobile communication systems, due to a lack of overall coordination, a situation of multiple incompatible standards, inconsistent signaling, and mutual incompatibility arose, making network coordination impossible. Therefore, it is essential to make overall plans and take all factors into consideration, first building a digital trunking command and dispatch communication network to meet the coordination requirements of the entire society.
China has a vast territory, and the randomness, suddenness, universality, and severity of natural and man-made disasters warn us that we must take precautions and prepare in advance. The establishment of a national emergency network for command and dispatch is a matter of utmost urgency, so that under the unified command and coordination of the national emergency command and dispatch center, the national digital trunking network can smoothly implement nationwide urban-rural coordination and large-scale command and dispatch, ensuring efficient public safety and public services nationwide.
Provinces with urgent needs, such as Xinjiang, or provinces with economic strength, such as Guangdong, can take the lead ahead of the rest of the country, gaining experience in building and operating provincial private mobile communication shared networks, thereby laying the foundation for the future construction and operation of a national digital trunking command and dispatch shared network.
Six Major Advantages of Digital Trunking Systems
Reporter: In your opinion, what positive impacts will rational planning of digital trunking bring to society and industrial development?
Li Jinliang: A digital trunking system uniformly plans and constructs the network infrastructure required by various business departments and manages it centrally. Each department only needs to establish its own dispatch console and multiple mobile stations to access the network. It is an efficient and cost-effective advanced dial-up mobile dispatch system, with the following six major advantages.
First, shared frequencies: frequencies originally assigned exclusively to various departments are pooled for shared use, thereby improving spectrum utilization efficiency. Second, shared facilities: due to frequency sharing, it becomes possible to co-locate infrastructure such as control centers and base stations that would otherwise be built separately by each department, thereby reducing network construction investment. Third, shared coverage: networks in adjacent coverage areas of different departments can be interconnected to achieve larger coverage. Fourth, shared services: network capabilities can be used to systematically disseminate public information such as road traffic conditions and weather forecasts, serving various departments and improving their organizational and coordination communication capabilities. Fifth, cost sharing: joint construction can significantly reduce investment in equipment, equipment rooms, power supplies, and other network construction costs, save on operation and maintenance personnel, and allow costs to be shared. Sixth, improved services: due to shared use of multiple channels, surplus and shortage can be balanced; centralized network construction strengthens management and maintenance; therefore, service quality is easier to improve and system functions are enhanced.
Digital trunking systems can provide a shared mobile communication platform for emergency response systems across cities nationwide, enabling unified alarm reporting, unified command, rapid response, resource sharing, and joint action. By establishing a unified urban emergency command and dispatch center, government, public security, armed police, hospitals, firefighting, emergency medical services, transportation, news, sports, tourism, and hotel departments can all be integrated into a single digital trunking mobile communication network, facilitating social coordination and command and dispatch for large-scale events, and ensuring efficient public safety and public services for the city.
Modern Cities Must Build Unified Emergency Networks
Reporter: What suggestions do you have for digital trunking frequency band planning in various provinces? What key points should provinces grasp in digital trunking construction?
Li Jinliang: Due to the technical complexity of trunking systems, spectrum and investment requirements are higher than building individual traditional private networks, but far lower than the sum of all private networks.
If each department builds an independent command and dispatch communication center, on the one hand, multiple investments lead to waste of construction funds, frequency resources, and various material resources; moreover, because government and social investments are dispersed, each command and dispatch communication center suffers from a shortage of funds, resources, and materials, thereby affecting its construction progress, scale, and level. On the other hand, multiple independent constructions inevitably lead to inconsistent technical systems for command and dispatch communication systems. Without a unified command and dispatch communication platform between different departments and different police branches, coordination and collaboration become impossible, joint actions that are necessary are difficult to implement quickly and effectively, and database information resources, manpower, and materials cannot be shared among departments, potentially delaying the optimal timing for responding to emergencies.
Although China's analog trunking communication lacked overall planning, developed slowly, took detours, and encountered setbacks, Huaxun in the north and Guomai in the south leveraged the characteristics of trunking communication systems, insisted on serving collective users across departments, and provided professional dispatch services, thereby achieving considerable economic benefits and good social benefits. This enabled their trunking communication networks to develop sustainably and healthily, setting an example and providing valuable experience for the construction and operation of trunking communication networks in China.
Some private communication networks in China must on the one hand meet internal production command and dispatch needs, and on the other hand also undertake communication tasks for office administration, administrative affairs, and external exchanges. Some even provide partial telephone services for employee residences. In the process of telecommunications system reform and establishing a modern enterprise system, departments that originally planned to build independent networks should actively change their mindsets, adapt to market demands, actively adopt digital trunking with a unified technical system, participate in social fundraising to establish a company for the construction, management, and operation of the shared network, and attract an increasing number of former private mobile communication network units to join the digital trunking shared network as professional users.
In this process, the overall service level and service scope of the digital trunking shared network will be gradually improved and expanded. Through further interconnection and interworking with public networks, it will inevitably generate greater social and economic benefits, thereby playing a positive supplementary and extension role. 