Cleveland Fire Brigade enhances service with Motorola's technology

• Fire brigade continues its digital transformation through control room enhancement
• Cloud-ready system offers future options for dynamic capacity expansion and simplified Emergency Services Network (ESN) integration
• Dispatch efficiency is improved by providing staff with unified access to radio, telephone and social media
• Demonstrates how Motorola Solutions’ evolving command and control solutions portfolio supports Great Britain’s emergency services now and in the future

Basingstoke, England – June. 22, 2017 – Motorola Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: MSI) today announced that Cleveland Fire Brigade has upgraded its control room to enable operators to securely take 999 calls from the public and communicate with frontline staff across any network or device. WAVETM Control Room Solution (WAVE CRS) from Motorola Solutions will drive productivity and enhance the service the fire brigade provides to 560,000 local citizens.

The United Kingdom’s emergency services landscape is evolving. How citizens contact fire brigades has changed dramatically since the introduction of the UK ‘999’ service in the late 1930s. A growing number of citizens are now ‘Digital by Default’ preferring to use data services rather than voice in their interactions with the emergency services.

WAVE CRS will address this trend, enabling the fire brigade’s operators to dispatch more efficiently by accessing radio, telephone and social media through one intuitive touch screen.

The needs of the UK fire service have evolved with many brigades looking to embrace a unified multi-technology environment that can seamlessly work with existing Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) infrastructure in the current mission-critical Airwave network and, once ready, the forthcoming broadband Emergency Services Network (ESN).

The WAVE CRS meets both requirements, helping Cleveland Fire Brigade enhance the service it provides citizens while getting prepared for their future communications requirements.

“Our brigade provides fire and rescue services to the boroughs of Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar, Cleveland and Stockton-on-Tees, an area covering nearly 600 square kilometres. We decided to upgrade the existing system in order to add new functionality, enabling us to improve our service to the public and prepare for the next generation of emergency services, ESN,” said Ray Khaliq, assistant chief Fire officer and director at Cleveland Fire Brigade.

“As well as looking to the future, WAVE Control Room Solution also enables us to better connect our people and teams regardless of their chosen method of communication. This provides our operators with greater situational awareness and the ability to communicate quicker and more accurately when dealing with incidents,” concluded Khaliq.

WAVE CRS supports a large number of communication types such as analogue or digital radio (Digital Mobile Radio, TETRA) and telephony systems (Public Switched Telephone Network, GSM etc.), social (Twitter etc.), messaging services and alarms. To deliver this effectively, a traditional system would have to use a large number of controls, buttons and screens, requiring high levels of training and investment. Using WAVE CRS, operators will use a single intuitive user interface.

“Our team has over 40 years’ experience providing and supporting mission-critical communications systems for both the emergency and private sector in the UK. We are a trusted partner to our customers, providing a complete package of design, integration, training, installation, commissioning and support – allowing them to focus on their core activities of serving the public,” said Phil Jefferson, MSSSI vice president for sales and services UK and Ireland at Motorola Solutions.

“The on-premise and cloud-based versions of WAVE Control Room Solution are a key part of our smart public safety solutions offering and underline our continual investment in the public safety sector,” concluded Jefferson.