The Demand
Utility companies such as oil and gas, power generation and transmission, water treatment and wastewater services require reliable, robust and instant communications to link all facilities and staff to effectively serve customers’ and communities’ needs around the clock. Communications that meet the highest demands regarding safety, responsiveness, flexibility and efficiency are crucial for utilities and must never be compromised.
Mining companies require integrated, open standards-based communications solutions for a wide range of mining operations both above and underground. These strategically built communication systems for confined spaces also apply in a variety of locations other than mines – such as service, railway and roadway tunnels. Mining operations requiring reliable, robust and instant communications to link all operational facilities and staff, and must be designed to cope in the ever-changing, roughest and harshest environments.
Transport companies have a challenge coordinating transportation operations of different modes, each with a variety of systems serving individual modes. These can be broadly classified as:
- Traffic systems for coordinating vehicle movement and traffic control for shipping, highways, railroads and air corridors.
- Fleet systems for managing movement of vehicles and controlling their schedules, in trucking, transit and railcar fleets.
- Terminal systems for managing the movement of goods in and out of a terminal, at airports, ports and rail yards.
- Incident systems for dispatching crews to respond to incidents and managing the incident clearance process.
- Information systems for disseminating information to the public and company on the status of goods and their conditions.
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How it works
A major emergency at a company location triggers a pre-planned explosion and fire incident with the potential for high casualties. Company personnel and First Responders designated for this type of emergency are immediately notified, as are outside expert personnel and agencies, with all automatically connected in pre-planned tiered workgroups. Each well-defined workgroup permits effective span of control and reporting, enabling company and emergency personnel to respond and react to their respective situations as previously planned. With all voice channels fully interoperable, updates can also occur through video conferencing and streaming, text messaging (SMS), and data and wireless connectivity. Conversations can be recorded with Call Detail Records (CDR) available for review and planning purposes.
How connectivity is achieved
Radios tethered to connectors on gateways become base stations for those frequencies. Gateways can be stacked to support multiple frequencies. Signaling and data is transcoded into IP and permitted to pass through the client’s firewall into a secure, encrypted IP-VPN tunnel that automatically connects to a unicomconnect™ hosted platform via the internet (or private network). The platform also connects to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), cellular and private networks and acts as a ‘SoftSwitch’ or giant PBX in the cloud. Cellular or landline phones can call radio channels or digitally trunked Dual Tone Multi-Function (DTMF) radios. Radios can call selected cellular, landline, data or other connected radio channel numbers. |
