PUBLIC SAFETY LOOKING TO THE FUTURE ON 'VOICE FIRST' TECHNOLOGY

A brilliant BAPCO 2019 with TCCA's Critical Communications Europe this year. A successful show, and a busy two days. On the Red Box stand we were demonstrating the efficiencies that can be driven by turning communications captured across control rooms and public safety workers in the field, into structured voice data sets. A solution that resonated with our visitors.

Meeting with current and new customers and catching up with our partners, the message at this year’s show was clear - public safety organisations are looking to the future. They are pushing toward efficiency while driving innovation and utilising technology to help them do so - as such they are seeking collaboration and flexibility from their suppliers.

The role of voice is central to this. It is a critical data set for the digital transformation of both private and public sector businesses. Advances in transcription, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) make the value of voice data sets realisable (previously only accessible by listening), providing organisations with significant opportunities and benefits.

Many of our public safety customers are working with us to set up the delivery of automated and accurate transcriptions of those conversations into their case management or CRM system of choice, to verify important details, reconstruct events for evidence gathering, and improve quality and training procedures.

As transcription is currently done manually in many cases, an automated solution drives productivities and more effective incident reconstruction and evidencing, given the increased focus of those doing this work on the output rather than the input.

Digital transformation can take time however, and the underlying theme of the show was the complexity involved in the level of change our public safety infrastructure is undertaking with the move to the Emergency Service Network (ESN) and delivery of an integrated 4G LTE system.

It was great to share our views on ESN, what this means to our industry and discuss the upcoming Airwave migration to DCS. Organisations are clearly keen to understand the technology requirements and challenges they need to overcome through the development process, so that the transition to Airwave is as smooth as possible without a break in service when it is rolled out.

The new service, due to replace the current Airwave system, is expected to start rolling out next year to police, fire, and ambulance staff and the UK will be delivering critical voice and data for emergency services over an enhanced and more resilient commercial 4G network. The home office needs buy-in from technology vendors to help encourage the emergency services to move across quickly, so that the need to run two systems simultaneously is kept to the minimum amount of time possible and Red Box is actively participating in these preparations in close collaboration with our customers and partners.

BAPCO is such a wonderful arena to discuss our customers challenges, explore solutions and showcase the technology that is shaping our future.