Inter-operability is the ability of public safety service and support providers — police and RCMP, firefighters, BC Ambulance, BC Transit, Legislative Assembly Protective Services and all other user agencies on the CREST network — to communicate with front-line employees from other responding agencies to exchange voice and/or data communications on demand and in real time.
Most people assume that public safety is already inter-operable. This is not the case. When CREST shareholders gave direction to upgrade the region’s public safety telecommunications network to the P25 digital public safety network, their decision was driven by three primary public safety goals: to ensure that the south island region would be self-reliant in the event of a large scale emergency; to improve coverage and radio sound quality for CREST user agencies; and to continue to address a critical communications gap that exists for many emergency response organizations throughout BC and across the country – the fact that individual agencies too often can’t speak to each other in real time.
Today, more than 50 user agencies on the CREST P25 network have inter-operable capabilities enabling them to communicate seamlessly across agencies when needed. Inter-operability allows for more efficient and safer back-up support and response times, and our region’s emergency responders and our residents are safer as a result.
