Hytera Communications, a global provider of end-to-end radio communications technologies, used the recent Africa Tech Festival to showcase its integrated solutions within various vertical industries.
Although best known for its handheld communications devices, Hytera demonstrated how integrated command and control (ICC) offers customers the ability to not only spot issues and provide communications, but also take appropriate action.
The display at Africa Tech Festival included solutions for widely differing vertical markets like public safety, transport, mining and hospitality – all of which benefit from the ICC.
“It allows them to bring all different forms of communication into one panel,” according to a Cedric Rigney, senior sales manager at Hytera South Africa. “This could be a dashboard or a map, depending on the industry and application. As an example: for public safety, incidents could show on a map as they are logged, with calls passed automatically from the radio to a dispatcher. These actions can then be audited if needed.”
He cites another example of a traffic management system that could integrate dashcams or external cameras, and include software like licence plate recognition couple with appropriate actions.
“Even our bodycams now have facial recognition features,” he explains. “This means that the appropriate response can be taken at all times.”
Hytera provides the end point devices and the platform that enables these solutions, and is able to integrate with any communications networks and operations.
This integration is the key to a reliable and fit-for-purpose solution, the spokesman adds.
For instance, a highway camera gains new functionality by pushing the video feed to a system that can process it, creating situational awareness and responding with the relevant action.
“In a safe city environment, a solution is about more than the camera. The value lies in knowing what to do with an image, whether it is sounding an alarm, generating a forewarning or creating a heatmap.”
This allows authorities to start picking up on trends, so they can be more proactive.
Indeed, a properly integrated and implemented system can do a long way towards make cities safer.
Rigney points to a model on display at Africa Tech Festival, showcasing how an integrated Hytera system could be used to make major events run more smoothly, while improving their safety as well.
“Think about the G20 soon to be held in Johannesburg. This requires multiple disciplines to be reactive, so the system could bring all the endpoint inputs together, visible on a single dashboard.”
These inputs could include highway cameras, bodycams, CCTV and more. “You can use the technologies that you have already got, and integrate them into a single solution.”
Hytera Unified Communications (UC) integrates advanced technologies with existing systems, seamlessly integrating DMR and TETRA standard portable two-way radios, body-worn cameras (BWC), PoC, and command and control centre, offering a robust and comprehensive communication system for law enforcement, emergency services, and other mission-critical sectors.
The solution offers multi-system intercommunication, advanced voice processing, unified dispatching and rich multimedia capabilities.
As it becomes more widespread, 5G networking promises to vastly improve communications.
“It enables realtime communications because the latency is a lot shorter,” he explains. “5G also allows for the deployment of autonomous devices that can operate without human interaction.”
Hytera devices can operate on a variety of broadband and narrowband networks, and are designed to failover to an alternative network in case of a break in communications,
“Our devices all have SIM cards built-in, and can operate on all communications networks, including push-to-talk over cellular, broadband and narrow band,” Rigney says.