EU CARDS - PPU BIH

An important component of the programme was the establishment of strategic systems for telecommunications within and between police bodies creating independent and safe infrastructures which are the preconditions for operations and exchange of data.

All the Institutions in a modern State need to rely upon secure, efficient and fast communications between themselves and toward the outside with the aim of providing a better service to the citizens. Communications services can be either rented from public or private companies however such solutions generate ongoing costs. Alternatively a strategy can be developed based on the principle of creating an independent system to serve the different institutions.

The EU Delegation, working in close cooperation with the relevant national authorities in BiH, decided to follow a strategy of sustainability and independence and therefore agreed to fund the development of an independent system which would form the core of a nationwide telecommunication system for the needs of different law enforcement institutions in BiH.

The project established a fully independent transmission system in order to connect MoS, Police locations, IDDEA and its peripheral locations, throughout BiH into a united system. The solution includes three components as follows:

Create a backbone for the transmission system as a SDH ring on the level of the entire BiH.
Connect all towns with police locations to the created backbone. The connection is by radio-relay transmission systems of the SDH hierarchy.
In towns, connect the appropriate number of access points by point-to-multipoint access.

The backbone for the transmission system is composed of the most up-to-date technology; the Synchronous Digitalized Hierarchy (SDH) with huge capacity. It provides faster and less expensive network interconnection than traditional equipment and the capability to send data at multi-gigabit rates over single-mode fibre-optics links.

The network is fully operational and shows a high level of performance with great satisfaction by all users. The end users are now in a position to rely on their own telecommunication system and do not have to pay any longer for renting their links through external telecommunications operators.

The sustainability of the network is ensured by a yearly budget allocation from the State budget.

The network has been implemented connecting Prosecutors’ Offices and Courts through a project funded by the EC Delegation.

Further implementation has been conducted by Ministry of Civil Affairs connecting more municipalities in BiH.

TETRA is the first truly digital open standard for professional communications and for a digital professional mobile radio system. The standard is defined by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) that joins the forces of network operators, national administrations, equipment manufacturers and users. What is notable in the status of ETSI is that it publishes telecommunications standards that are mandatory for use in Europe, but also widely applicable outside of Europe.

It is a highly advanced technical platform providing integrated voice and data service and is a fully digital system providing consistent voice quality and low bit error rate for data accordingly. It supports voice, circuit switched data and packet, switched data services with a wide selection of data transmission rates and error protection levels.

TETRA has, from the beginning, been designed as a trunked system that effectively and economically supports shared usage of the network by several organizations, yet maintaining privacy and mutual security. Virtual networking inside the TETRA network enables each organization to operate independently, but still enjoy the benefits of a large, high–functionality system with efficient resource employment.

Connectivity between networks of different types is becoming increasingly important. This has been taken into account in the development of TETRA technology. TETRA networks facilitate a wide range of connections to external networks. A TETRA network can be connected to, for example, public and private telephone networks different types of data networks as well as large command and control systems. All these networks can be accessed from the mobile terminal.

TETRA fulfils European Police requirements and is a high security technology that includes encryption of voice, data, signaling and user identities. It provides very fast call set-up time (300ms) that is crucial for the public safety and emergency services.

The project established a central system with the main components such as the Switching and Control Node, Network Management System (NMS) and a few terminals along with the dispatchers delivered to the users; the increase of the number of terminals and dispatchers is required in order to have an operational use of the system.

VoIP is the third component of the telecommunications system implemented by the EU CARDS PPU programme. The objective of this component is to reduce to a minimum the cost of telephone calls incurred by those offices which will be using the network of law enforcement agencies.

The telephone network converts the signal into IP format. All the IP switches are integrated into one system via SDH network that is accessible from all locations. The system connects 28 police units and a national dialing plan was created and distributed.

Police bodies are supposed to implement the system through the integration with classical telephone networks by means of appropriate interface and the increase of number of users.