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CFA is pivotal for safe communities throughout Victoria.
We have 58,000, approximately, members in CFA, most of whom are volunteers alongside
our career staff and we're very concerned to make sure that the best equipment of all
sorts is available to protect the safety of our people.
The previous radios were about 17 years old. So well and truly at the end-of-life.
And it was time to upgrade and keep our communications current and to make sure that the safety of
our members was protected with modern technology. And that process led us inexorably to the
Tait solution. Interoperability is vital for us.
We operate in close co-operation in regional areas with DSE but also with police. Reliable
communication across agencies is absolutely pivotal, particularly in the flurry of activity
around a major emergency response activity. The Tait rollout has been an extraordinary
success. We've been very pleased that the company has
seen the issues that we've been facing as joint challenges that we've worked through
together. It's been a project with a lot of complexity.
We've had portable radios, we've had mobile radios, but we've also had the vehicle mounted
repeater which is another product that Tait customised to meet our requirements and it's
been quite a significant success. In addition to that we had a range of other
functional changes that we needed and Tait was able to deliver those on a very tight
timeframe. We've been impressed with the calibre of the
people that Tait have, particularly in Christchurch, in the factory.
We have a very high level of regard and confidence in the mainline engineering team.
The flexibility and the engineering rigour that Tait has to offer came to our benefit
in regard to this project and the products that we've purchased.
I think with the Tait radio we will have the capability to enhance what we do over a period
of time. We have mobile and portable radios that are
operating in digital mode and digital channels that are already programmed in the radios.
And we'll also have new Tait base station radios operating in P25 digital mode.
The needs of our brigades are really quite different.
Urban brigades and rural brigades have quite different requirements.
So we were pleased that Tait radio could meet all of those requirements.