The US Defense Department has awarded a $15.8m contract
to the federal markets division of Motorola for a radio system for
the Baghdad Police Force.
Betsy Flood, a spokeswoman for the Defense Information Systems
Agency (DISA), said the Baghdad contract covers the purchase,
delivery, distribution and installation of 3,000 portable and
vehicle-mounted mobile radios, base stations, spare parts,
repeaters and towers.
Trunked radio systems allow for the automatic sharing of
multiple radio channels. A group of channels is assigned to a group
of users - such as police or fire department users - who then share
the channels.
When a user attempts to make a call with his radio, a trunked
system searches for an available channel and assigns it to the
call. Motorola manufactures a line of trunked radio systems that
support the Tetra standard, which features built-in encryption and
can scale up to support as many as 30,000 users.
Tetra, short for terrestrial trunked radio, is the European
Telecommunications Standardisation Institute's only open standard
for digital two-way radio.
Neither the Pentagon nor DISA could immediately explain exactly
what constitutes the "Baghdad Police Force". Press reports since
the fall of Baghdad have said the Iraqi-manned police force has
been disarmed and all but disbanded, although some Iraqi police
officers do patrol with the US military.
Last month the Defense Department awarded MCI a contract to
install a cellular telephone system in Baghdad to facilitate
communications among US personnel.
Bob Brewin writes for Computerworld