Ambulance New Zealand Inc.

The Customer

Ambulance New Zealand incorporates the membership of nine land ambulance services and a number of air ambulance operators throughout
New Zealand. St John provides nearly 90 per cent of these services, with about 150 stations around New Zealand, 600 salaried ambulance officers
and a further 2200 volunteers. Ambulance operations are currently coordinated out of eight communications centres.

The Challenge

The Ambulance Service communications system has to be reliable, responsive and flexible - hence the service's strong relationship with Tait Communications Ltd and TeamTalk New Zealand Ltd, who have supplied the conventional mobile radio network that currently links all ambulance
services with more than 105 repeater sites nationwide.

The need for a network with high quality radio equipment and excellent RF performance meant Tait T800 repeaters were chosen. These, combined with TeamTalk's field experience and technical capability, have resulted in reliable and flexible network communications.

Under a new national Ambulance Communications Project to begin implementation in 2004, the number of communications centres will be reduced to three, each equipped to best practice standards and operating as one virtual centre. Any onecommunications centre will have the capability of communicating throughout New Zealand via the radio telephone network should the need arise.

The Benefits

Tait developed specialist custom features for the T2020 mobile radios used in all ambulances and stations. These include selective calling enabling users to call an individual or contact a group of users, and status messaging where users can relay their job status to the control centre by simply choosing from a pre-defined list of messages.

Wellington Free Ambulance currently utilises a Tait mobile data solution which includes Automatic Vehicle Location - allowing its vehicles to be tracked via the Internet using a GPS receiver. Under the Ambulance Communications Project, AVL will be installed in all New Zealand ambulances, with the Tait supplied radio telephone network used as the secondary means of AVL data transfer.

Tony Blaber, project director for the Ambulance Communications Project, describes the benefits of a linked radio network across the country. "The ambulance radio network is a key component in the control of ambulances throughout the country. Ambulances are equipped to work in any part of New Zealand, and in the event of a major incident or routine inter-region transfer, can maintain constant voice contact with the appropriate centre by merely changing the radio scan group," Mr Blaber says.

St John has announced Tait as one of nine official suppliers of equipment fitted inside a standard ambulance - as part of a project to standardise
the equipment used in St John ambulances nationwide.