The Netherlands' C2000 TETRA system fully operational

The Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice has announced that The Netherlands’ new nationwide TETRA communication system for security and rescue workers — known as C2000 — is now fully operational.

The system was officially handed over to the operator organisation on 1 July 2020.

The first major milestone of the project was reached at the beginning of year when, on the night of 28 January 2020, the old network was shut down and the new, ACCESSNET-T-IP system from Hytera Mobilfunk was successfully commissioned at the same time.

Since then, the entire Dutch police, fire and rescue services have been communicating via the new C2000 system. Around 18,600 radios are in operation every day, making around 155,000 calls per day and processing 100 emergency calls.

Hytera Mobilfunk had won the tender for the renewal of the TETRA system in 2015. According to Matthias Klausing, the company's CEO, the one-step migration offered significant advantages.

“This procedure significantly reduces the complexity of a migration, since there is no need to establish interconnectivity between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ network. The one-step migration is therefore saving the customer time and money,” he said.

“The switchover went smoothly. We were technically well prepared and with a strong team onsite,” added Martin Hucke, Chief Operating Officer at Hytera Mobilfunk and responsible for the C2000 project within the company.

Since then, the system has been optimised and adapted according to the real usage criteria and feedback.

Since the migration, the Hytera team has worked with all parties and users involved in order to make adjustments whenever needed and to resolve reported problems as quickly as possible.

“All users can rely on the fact that we will continue to closely monitor the network operation in the future and optimise it where necessary,” Hucke said.

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