Transforming University Communication Systems for Enhanced Safety

23 October 2024

PROJECT: UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS UPGRADE
INDUSTRY: EDUCATION
LOCATION: AUSTRALIA

The Customer

Our customer is one of Australia’s largest and most prominent educational institutions, serving over 90,000 students and employs more than 11,000 staff across multiple campuses. The main campus is situated in a major CBD, characterised by high density and a large geographic footprint.

This university places a strong emphasis on ensuring the safety and security of its staff, students and visitors, necessitating a reliable and robust communications solution.

The Challenge

The university faced challenges with its existing communication infrastructure. It had previously been sold a low-end Push-to-Talk over IP (PTToIP) solution, which proved to be highly unreliable. This system suffered from poor cellular coverage in certain areas, frequent network congestion and inconsistent performance on Wi-Fi. Such issues posed serious safety risks, particularly for frontline security personnel responsible for emergency management and campus safety.

The university’s requirements were clear: a communication solution with exceptional reliability, availability and a high grade of service that could provide seamless connectivity across all campuses. This posed a considerable challenge, given the need to cover large areas with varying levels of cellular and Wi-Fi coverage, ensuring robust and consistent communication without service interruptions.

The Solution

CSE Crosscom designed and implemented a high-end, converged communication solution incorporating multiple redundancies, ensuring the highest levels of reliability and availability to meet the university’s needs. The tailored solution included several key components:

• Orion Radio Network Powered by Motorola Capacity Max: The Orion Radio network provides extensive coverage and secure communication across all campuses. This network leverages Motorola Capacity Max technology, recognised as the highest enterprise-grade ecosystem within Motorola’s portfolio, ensuring robust and scalable communications for its diverse needs.
• Dedicated On-Campus Radio Repeater Sites: To combat coverage blackspots and ensure reliable communication throughout the campuses, dedicated radio repeater sites were established. Each site included two repeaters to provide redundancy and handle high call volumes, along with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system and dual power supply modules, further enhancing the system’s resilience and failover capabilities.
• Integration with Motorola WAVE PTToC: For seamless roaming between the radio network and Push To Talk Over Cellular (PTToC), the solution integrated Motorola WAVE technology. This integration allowed for communications failover in the event of radio network failure or radio coverage blackspot.
• IP Linking with Automatic Failover: Utilising the university’s existing IP infrastructure as the primary service, the solution featured automatic failover to a CSE Crosscom-managed Telstra LTE service. This setup provided additional layers of redundancy, guaranteeing continuous communication even during primary network outages.

 

CSE Crosscom also implemented automatic fault alarms, 24/7 support and maintained dedicated spares for rapid system recovery in the event of a fault.

This comprehensive approach resulted in a communication system that consistently performed at a 100% grade of service with no coverage black spots, even during planned IP outages where the system seamlessly failed over without impacting frontline users.

The installation process was led by experienced project managers and involved collaborative efforts from both CSE Crosscom and the customer’s teams. The project milestones were met through a structured approach that included Factory Acceptance Testing, on-site testing post-installation and User Acceptance Testing, ensuring the solution met all reliability and quality standards.

The new communication solution has provided the customer with a highly reliable and seamless communication platform that significantly enhances safety and operational efficiency across all campuses.