Alcatel-Lucent and PowerTrunk Complete TETRA/LMR Trial in United States with NJ TRANSIT

NEW YORK and PARIS, Feb. 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Alcatel-Lucent and PowerTrunk Inc. have successfully completed a trial of a TETRA/LMR (Terrestrial Trunked Radio/Land Mobile Radio) network with NJ TRANSIT in Newark, New Jersey. This is the first TETRA trial in the United States and demonstrates the multiple features and functionality of TETRA technology, as well as the strength of specialized TETRA-enabled applications.

TETRA is a digital trunked mobile radio standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) widely deployed by public-safety agencies, utilities and transportation companies outside North America with 2,000 contracts in place in more than 100 countries to date.

The trial TETRA/LMR network enabled NJ TRANSIT buses to communicate, using voice and data, with operations personnel. The current network limits available data bandwidth and is not spectrally efficient.  The trial TETRA network provided higher data bandwidth and 6.25 KHz voice equivalency that will meet future FCC narrow-banding requirements.

Covering a service area of 5,325 square miles, NJ TRANSIT is the nation's largest statewide transportation system, providing bus, rail and light rail transit linking major points in New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia. The agency operates a fleet of 2,027 buses, 711 trains and 45 light rail vehicles. NJ TRANSIT's 240 bus routes and 12 rail lines take passengers on more than 223 million trips each year.  

"This is the first TETRA trial in the United States and the only one that entirely utilizes equipment certified by the FCC," stated Jose Martin, Chief Operating Officer of PowerTrunk. "We are delighted to team with Alcatel-Lucent for this project and I hope that we will cooperate in many others in the future."

"The existing NJ TRANSIT communications backbone enabled us to efficiently and smoothly reconfigure the network to support TETRA," said Nicola Guidara, Director of Transportation Market Segment for Alcatel-Lucent's Americas Region. "Thanks to our close collaboration with PowerTrunk, together were able to provide NJ TRANSIT with an advanced TETRA network."

Alcatel-Lucent served as the primary network integrator for the trial.  PowerTrunk-T provided base stations, mobiles, hand portables, a line dispatcher and a switch to integrate a legacy VHF system. In addition, the network is integrated to an existing CAD system and a PowerTrunk PABX/PSTN gateway allows full duplex cellular-like communications between cell phones and PowerTrunk radios.

PowerTrunk has received authorization from the FCC and Industry Canada for its TETRA base station repeater as well as for a subscriber unit and a mobile unit. These units are currently being piloted in the NJ TRANSIT demonstration. Certificates for the PowerTrunk TETRA BSR75 base station radio/repeater, the TETRA HTT-500 subscriber unit and the MDT-400 mobile unit are available at the FCC website.

About PowerTrunk Inc.

PowerTrunk Inc. is the subsidiary of Teltronic® S.A.U. responsible for business development, distribution and customer support for Teltronic land mobile radio projects in North America. PowerTrunk is headquartered in New York City. With 35 years' experience designing, manufacturing, implementing and supporting digital and analog land mobile radio turnkey projects, Teltronic S.A.U. has more than 300 systems installed in 50 countries. Teltronic's LMR solutions are widely deployed in the public safety, oil and gas, transportation and utilities industries. LMR equipment includes conventional and trunked infrastructure systems, mobiles, hand portables and dispatching consoles for TETRA, P25, WiMAX/LTE and MPT-1327 technologies. Headquartered in Spain, Teltronic S.A.U. has direct commercial presence in over 25 countries throughout Europe, Asia, the Pacific Rim, the Middle East, Latin America and the United States. For more information, go to www.powertrunk.com.

About Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris andNYSE : ALU)

The long-trusted partner of service providers, enterprises, strategic industries and governments around the world, Alcatel-Lucent is a leader in mobile, fixed, IP and Optics technologies, and a pioneer in applications and services. Alcatel-Lucent includes Bell Labs, one of the world's foremost centres of research and innovation in communications technology.

With operations in more than 130 countries and one of the most experienced global services organizations in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with global reach. The Company achieved revenues of Euro 16 billion in 2010 and is incorporated in France and headquartered in Paris.

For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com, read the latest posts on the Alcatel-Lucent blog http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/blog and follow the Company on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Alcatel_Lucent.

SOURCE Alcatel-Lucent