law enforcement communications
Two Way Radios for Law Enforcement & Public Safety
Frontline teams need to hear and be heard the moment it matters. Digicom designs, supplies and supports two way radio systems for police, emergency services and public safety operations across Australia, with the coverage, encryption and interoperability the job demands.
Public Safety
Contact with control that holds under pressure.
Digicom Wireless supplies digital radio, wide-area push-to-talk and body worn video to law enforcement and public safety operations across Australia. Three things decide whether that equipment earns its place: whether the call gets through, whether the traffic stays private, and whether the recording stands up later.
The Reality
The worst moment is not when you find a dead spot
Radio equipment is judged on the ten seconds an officer needs it most: a foot pursuit into a stairwell, a vehicle stop at the edge of the district, a single unit at a job that has escalated. Everything else about the system is preparation for those ten seconds.
The common failures are ordinary. Coverage that was never proven inside the building. Audio that a siren swallows. A handset that cannot reach the officers who arrive from the neighbouring command. None of these show up in a demonstration.
How We Specify It
Encryption and digital interoperability, scoped to your system
Digital radio standards including DMR and P25 exist so that equipment can operate on a common system and carry encrypted traffic rather than plain voice. Which standard applies to you is set by the system your control room already runs, not by us.
So we start there. Tell us the standard, the frequency plan and the encryption requirement, and we scope hardware to match. Where a requirement is genuinely sensitive we would rather discuss it in a consultation than publish assumptions on a web page. Everything we supply is ACMA type-approved, and we handle advanced radio features such as encryption keying and priority alerting at the programming stage. Ask for a system evaluation to start.
- Motorola Solutions Platinum Channel Partner
- Motorola WAVE PTX Specialist
- ARCIA & ACMA accredited
- ACMA type-approved equipment only
Operational Security
Where a public safety deployment usually comes unstuck.
Encryption, standards and coverage are the three that cause the most trouble after go-live, because all three are cheap to fix at specification and expensive to fix afterwards.
Encryption that matches the traffic
Unencrypted digital voice is still listenable with the right receiver. If officers are passing names, addresses, vehicle details or tactical instructions, encryption on the air interface is not optional.
The decisions that matter are which traffic is encrypted, how keys are loaded and rotated, and who in the organisation holds them. We work through those with you rather than shipping a default.
Digital standards and who you have to talk to
DMR and P25 are open digital standards, which is what allows a multi-agency response to share a system instead of relying on runners and mobile phones. The standard you need is the one your control room and your partner agencies already use.
We specify against that system, confirm what your existing handsets support, and stage any replacement so the fleet is never split into two halves that cannot hear each other.
District coverage without new towers
Extending conventional coverage to the edges of a district means sites, licences and capital. Wide-area push-to-talk over 4G and 5G gets mobile units talking across that footprint now, and can bridge back to the radio system.
Inside buildings the answer is different again. Custody areas, basements and older station buildings usually need in-building cellular or a repeater, and we prove it with coverage testing first.
Discuss Your RequirementsFrontline Equipment
Voice, wide-area contact and video on the officer.
Three pieces of equipment cover most frontline deployments: an encryption-capable digital handset, a cellular unit for units working outside the radio footprint, and a body worn camera for the record. All are supplied programmed and asset-tagged.
Motorola MOTOTRBO R7
Digital handset with encryption support, GNSS position reporting and audio processing that holds up next to a siren. The keypad suits units running several talk groups on one shift.
Motorola WAVE TLK 100
Push-to-talk over 4G and 5G for units operating beyond the radio footprint, or for a temporary command element at an incident. Talk groups are managed centrally and changed in minutes.
Motorola V500 Body Camera
Body worn video for the evidence record, with LTE streaming so a supervisor can see an incident while it is running, and docked offload back at the station. Full detail on our body worn cameras page.
Radio traffic can be logged for review through voice recording, and units tracked from a dispatch position with TRBOnet. Both are specified alongside the fleet, not bolted on later.
Wide-Area Push-to-Talk
Reach every mobile unit without building a network.
Extending conventional radio to the edge of a district is a capital project: sites, licences, antennas and years of lead time. Mobile units need to be reachable before any of that is funded.
Motorola WAVE PTX carries push-to-talk over the 4G and 5G network, so a unit at the far boundary of the command is on the same talk group as the one outside the station. Groups can be created for a specific operation and stood down afterwards, which suits taskings, escorts and temporary command posts. It also bridges to conventional radio, so it adds to the existing fleet rather than competing with it. See Motorola WAVE PTX and radio over cellular.
Where a supervisor needs to see where units are rather than ask, GPS tracking puts positions on a dispatch map alongside the voice.
- District-wide reach on the existing 4G and 5G footprint
- Operation-specific talk groups created and stood down on demand
- Bridges to conventional radio so both fleets share a call
- Unit positions visible to a supervisor or dispatch console
- No towers, no spectrum application, no fixed infrastructure
- Supplied and configured by a Motorola WAVE PTX Specialist
Evidence Chain
From capture in the field to disclosure.
Body worn video is only useful if the whole path is thought through. A recording that cannot be located, or whose handling cannot be accounted for, is a problem rather than an asset.
Capture
The officer starts a recording in one action. Video and audio are written to the device with a timestamp and the assigned user, so the file is attributable from the moment it exists.
Stream
Where the incident warrants it, LTE streaming lets a supervisor or control room watch the situation while it is still running, and make resourcing decisions on what they can see rather than a description.
Offload
Back at the station the camera docks and the footage transfers to managed storage automatically, with the device charged and cleared for the next shift. Nobody copies files by hand.
Disclose
Footage is retrieved by incident, officer or time, then exported for prosecution, complaint handling or review under whatever access and retention rules your organisation sets.
Retention periods, access rights and redaction policy are decisions for your organisation, and they are far easier to configure before a deployment than after the first disclosure request. We can walk through the options with your evidence and prosecutions people. Full device detail is on our body worn cameras page, and radio traffic from the same incident can be captured through voice recording so voice and video line up on the timeline.
Technical Questions
Encryption, standards and evidence, explained.
General answers to the questions we are asked most. Anything specific to your system or your operating environment is better handled in a consultation than on a public page.
Can two way radios be encrypted? Yes. Digital radios support encryption on the air interface as standard practice in public safety.
Digital radio supports encrypting voice and data so that traffic is not intelligible to a receiver outside the fleet. Analogue radio does not offer anything comparable, which is one of the main reasons public safety users move to digital.
The practical work is in the configuration rather than the feature: which talk groups are encrypted, how keys are loaded and rotated, what happens when a device is lost, and who administers the keys. We work through those decisions with you at programming, and we would rather discuss the specifics of your requirement directly than publish assumptions here.
What is P25 and do we need it? It is a digital standard for public safety radio. Whether you need it depends on the system you already work with.
P25 is a family of open digital radio standards developed for public safety use, designed so equipment from different manufacturers can operate together on the same system and carry encrypted traffic. DMR is the other open digital standard in common commercial and government use.
Whether P25 is the right answer for your organisation is set by the system your control room runs and by the agencies you have to interoperate with, not by a preference on our side. Tell us which system you are on and we will scope to it. Where a requirement calls for a P25 system design, we will say so plainly and work through it with you at consultation rather than assuming it from a web enquiry.
Can officers on cellular push-to-talk talk to officers on radio? Yes, through a gateway between the cellular service and the conventional radio system.
This is the usual reason agencies add cellular push-to-talk rather than replacing radio with it. Motorola WAVE PTX can be bridged to a conventional fleet so a unit on a cellular handset and a unit on a radio share the same call.
That makes it practical to give wide-area contact to the roles that need it without touching the core fleet. More detail on the approach is on our radio over cellular page.
How is body worn video stored and handed over as evidence? Docked offload to managed storage, retrieved by incident, officer or time.
Footage is recorded with a timestamp and an assigned user, then transferred to managed storage when the camera is docked at the end of a shift. Doing the transfer through a dock rather than by hand is what keeps the handling account intact.
From there, evidence is retrieved by incident, officer or time period and exported for prosecution, complaint handling or internal review. Retention periods, access rights and redaction are set by your organisation's policy and we configure the system to match. See the body worn cameras page for device detail.
Can a supervisor see live video from the field? Yes, where the device supports LTE streaming and there is network coverage.
Cameras with LTE streaming can send video back while an incident is running, so a supervisor is making resourcing decisions on what they can see rather than on a radio description. That depends on cellular coverage at the location, which is why we check coverage as part of scoping rather than assuming it.
Streaming is normally used selectively rather than continuously, both for network reasons and because most agencies want a policy on when a live feed is appropriate. That policy should be settled before deployment.
How do we get coverage across a district without building infrastructure? Wide-area push-to-talk over 4G and 5G, with in-building work where the structure blocks signal.
Adding radio sites means spectrum, capital and lead time. Push-to-talk over the cellular network gives district-wide reach immediately and can bridge back to the radio fleet, which is usually the fastest route to covering mobile units.
Buildings are a separate problem. Custody areas, basements, older station buildings and multi-storey car parks all attenuate signal regardless of what network you are on, and the fix is in-building cellular or a repeater. We measure before recommending, using RF coverage testing.
Can we trial equipment before committing to a fleet? Yes. A small evaluation deployment is the sensible way to test audio, fit and workflow.
Specifications do not tell you whether audio cuts through in a real environment, whether a camera mount survives a shift, or whether the offload workflow fits the way the station actually runs. A short evaluation with a small number of devices answers all three.
We can supply evaluation units programmed to your plan, and for defined operations or temporary command requirements radio hire covers the need without a capital purchase. Servicing across the life of the fleet runs through our repair centre.
Deployments
The teams this equipment ends up with.
Requirements shift a long way between a patrol unit and a control room. These are the groups we most often specify for, and what each one changes about the build.
Patrol and Response Units
Vehicle and portable radio with encryption, audio that survives a siren, and an emergency button that reaches control immediately. Body worn video usually rides with the same officer.
Control Rooms and Dispatch
Console positions with a live picture of who is where and a full log of what was said. Built around TRBOnet for dispatch and voice recording for the record.
Custody and Prisoner Transport
Two hard problems in one: coverage inside a building that was designed to contain people, and voice contact for a vehicle in transit. Usually solved with an in-building layer plus wide-area push-to-talk on the road.
Public Order and Event Policing
Short-notice talk groups for an operation, extra handsets for a few days, and a command element that can be stood up anywhere. Overlaps with how we run major event communications.
Regulatory and Compliance Enforcement
Inspectors and authorised officers working alone across a wide area, often for another arm of government. Lone worker alerting, recorded interactions and the procurement route covered on our government page.
Evidence and Property Management
The team that has to find a recording months later. Their requirements shape docking, storage, retention and access more than anyone else's, so we bring them into the design early rather than handing them a finished system.
Confidential Discussion
Ready to scope encryption, coverage and evidence?
Bring us the system you run now, the operating environment and the constraints you cannot publish. We will work through hardware, encryption handling, coverage and evidence workflow with you directly, and put nothing in writing that you have not agreed.