Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism

TETRA TECHNOLOGY
TETRA is a modern standard for digital PMR and has enjoyed wide acceptance 
(especially in Europe) to now be considered one of the most mature and promi-
nent technologies for the PPDR markets. TETRA specifications are constantly be-
ing evolved by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) and new 
features are being introduced to fulfill the growing and ever demanding PPDR re-
quirements. The original TETRA standard first envisaged in ETSI was known as the 
TETRA Voice plus Data (V 
+
D) standard with less emphasis on the data side with 
just two data services compared with the nine voice services. Because of the need 
to further evolve and enhance TETRA, the original V 
+
D standard is now known as 
TETRA 1. Packet Data Optimized (PDO) is a completed part of the TETRA suite 
of standards produced for only “Data Only” wireless communications applications 
(i.e., pagers). However, very few manufacturers have developed PDO systems and 
products because: all traditional PMR users use voice communication as well as data 
communications; and also the obvious application area for such standard (high data 
size transfer) would take significant amount of time and power to operate.
Nevertheless, TETRA already provides a comprehensive portfolio of services and 
facilities. TETRA protocol specifies several standard interfaces to ensure an open 

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Introduction
multivendor market: (1) Air Interface (AIR IF), (2) Terminal Equipment Interface 
(TEI), (3) Inter-System Interface (ISI), (4) Direct Mode Operation (DMO).
However, as time progresses, there is a need to evolve and enhance all technolo-
gies to better satisfy user requirements, future proof investments and ensure longev-
ity. Like GSM moving to GPRS, EDGE and UMTS/3G, TETRA will also evolve 
to satisfy increasing user demand for new services and facilities. For this reason, a 
TETRA 2 standard has been developed and is sufficiently complete for product de-
velopment purposes. However, product availability will depend on the different man-
ufacturers’ R&D plans, but manufacturers have not deployed product yet and take up 
is slow. At TETRA conferences the opinion was expressed that the earliest deploy-
ment of broadband TETRA (or equivalent) was likely to be 2020. This is because 
the existing network cannot be upgraded to support TETRA 2 due to spectrum avail-
ability issues; and some that could be will not because of the cost involved. Hence, 
there is a need for an upgraded PPDR communication system that would be highly 
efficient, secure, resilient and flexible with modern and sophisticated applications; 
and that even when the introduction of TETRA 2 and future releases (Broadband 
TETRA) become well established, there is a guarantee that the economic and com-
mercial uptake of the network is justified. However, there are issues with the uptake 
of the network, which would have implications on future networks; and they stem 
from the disadvantages of the current TETRA network.