Motorola inks $261mn comms and data deal with Victoria emergency services

Motorola Solutions has extended its partnership with the State of Victoria’s emergency services for at least another seven years.

In a $261mn deal, the tech firm will expand and upgrade the mission-critical radio network (Metropolitan Mobile Radio network, or MMR) serving Victoria Police, Ambulance Victoria and the Metropolitan Fire Brigade.

It will also develop and deploy new GPS and data services to help better inform staff across the organisations. The service will also provide customised online reporting, giving agencies valuable information about their radio network usage.

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Motorola Solutions Vice President and Managing Director, Steve Crutchfield, said: “Emergency services depend on having ‘always on’, secure and reliable communications for their daily work.

“For the past 13 years the MMR network has provided essential communications for Victoria’s first responders when they have needed it most. This includes uninterrupted coverage during Victoria’s tragic Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 and reliable performance during many other major emergencies.”

Victorian first responders depend on the mission-critical MMR service every day, which has been in place since 2005. They made more than 40mn push-to-talk voice transmission calls across the network in 2017.

Among the potential upgrades to MMR include a trial of its software-defined push-to-talk solution to extend radio network access to more users via broadband.