New Delhi, Oct 23 The Union Ministry of Home Affairs on Friday said it has sought public opinion and stakeholders’ input on developing a dedicated nationwide broadband network that would give roughly 30 lakh police, paramilitary and disaster response personnel push-to-talk, video and data link services.
In a statement, the MHA said it proposes to implement a pan-India dedicated Broadband Public Protection and Disaster Relief (BB-PPDR) Network to provide Mission Critical Push-to-Talk (MCPTT), Mission Critical Data and Mission Critical Video capabilities to police in states and Union territories, Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF), National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), fire service, medical service and other public safety agencies across the country.
“For designing the reference architecture, MHA is soliciting public opinion and stakeholders’ input on Design of Network Architecture for the proposed Broadband Public Protection and Disaster Relief (BB-PPDR) Communication System,” it said.
It sought ideas for design options, technology to be adopted, its comparative merits and demerits, cost efficiency and suitability to Indian conditions.
The ministry has chosen 10 pilot locations for the project — the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Amritsar, Bastar, Bengaluru, Guwahati, Ladakh, Lakshadweep, Mumbai, Rudraprayag and Visakhapatnam.
The MHA has an in-principle allocation of spectrum in the 814-824 and 859-869 MHz bands, outside the standard mobile broadband range, for which it has sought to know the availability of radio equipment and commercial devices for those frequencies.
According to the statement, the ministry is looking at around 30 lakh handsets. Of these, a bulk of around 21 lakh rugged field handsets will be for field units, 6 lakh smartphone-grade devices will be for senior officers and 3 lakh fixed or vehicle-mounted units.
The number of body-worn cameras is yet to be determined, the statement said.
(PTI News)
