security communications
Emergency & Security Radios for Fast Response Communication
Responding quickly to disturbances, accidents or threats is critical and requires seamless communication between security personnel in any emergency. A two-way radio solution from Digicom can help you speed up your response times, ensuring security threats are managed as safely and promptly as possible. Plus, with the option to customise digital features to your needs, you’ll be able to prioritise critical communications in an emergency and monitor the location of your team in relation to a threat.
Security & Emergency Response
Everything on a security contract comes back to response time.
Digicom Wireless supplies communications to security firms, in-house guarding teams, event and venue operators and control rooms across Australia. Disturbances, medical incidents, accidents and threats are all judged the same way afterwards: how quickly did someone get there, and can you show what happened.
The Problem
A phone call is the slowest way to raise an incident
A phone has to be unlocked, a contact found, a number dialled, and someone has to answer. Under pressure, with one hand occupied, that is a long time. Radio is one press to the whole team, and a supervisor hears it at the same moment as the nearest guard rather than after a relay.
The second failure is knowing who is closest. A control room that cannot see where its officers are ends up broadcasting and hoping. With GPS location on the fleet, the operator can send the officer who is genuinely nearest to the incident and keep the rest on post.
Why It Matters
Afterwards, the incident is judged on what you can prove
Complaints, insurance claims, licensing reviews and police requests all arrive weeks later, and memory is a poor defence. Recorded radio audio and body worn footage turn a contested version of events into a timeline, which protects the officer as often as it does the client.
Visible cameras also change behaviour at the moment of contact. A lot of the value in body worn cameras is de-escalation before an incident becomes physical, and only then evidence.
- Motorola Solutions Platinum Channel Partner
- ARCIA & ACMA accredited
- ACMA type-approved equipment only
Device Tiers
One contract, three kinds of officer, three kinds of device.
Issuing everyone the same handset either overspends on static posts or underequips the people who need location and data. We split a fleet by what the role actually does.
Supervisors and control room: a smart device
Shift supervisors and operators need more than voice. A smart radio runs the guard tour app, the incident log and the location view on the same device that carries the talkgroup, so the operator is not switching between a radio, a phone and a screen while an incident is running. Feeds into TRBOnet dispatch for a full console view.
Mobile patrols: push-to-talk over the network
A patrol car covering a suburb or a whole city is beyond any single repeater. Push-to-talk over cellular follows the 4G and 5G footprint, so one talkgroup holds together from the depot to the last site on the run. Location comes with it, which is what makes dispatching the nearest unit possible. See radio over cellular for how it bridges to an existing fleet.
Static guards and event details: licence-free UHF
A gatehouse, a door team or a one-off event detail does not need licensed spectrum or a subscription. Licence-free UHF handhelds are issued from the store cupboard, work out of the box, and are cheap enough to hold spares. For event work they come from the hire fleet instead of the asset register.
Discuss Your RequirementsRecommended for Security
Three devices that match the three tiers.
One handset for the supervisor, one for the patrol vehicle, one for the static post. Every unit we supply is ACMA type-approved, and everything here can be paired with body worn cameras where evidence capture is part of the contract.
Motorola MOTOTRBO Ion
The supervisor device. Carries the licensed talkgroup and your guard tour, reporting and incident apps on one unit, so a shift lead is not juggling a radio and a phone while directing a response.
Motorola WAVE TLK 100
The patrol device. Talks over the 4G and 5G network, so a mobile unit stays on the same talkgroup across an entire city. GPS reporting lets the control room dispatch whoever is genuinely closest.
Kenwood TK-3710
The static post device. Licence-free UHF, tough casing, simple controls and a full shift of battery. The right answer for gatehouses, door teams and short-term event details.
Duress, Evidence, Accountability
One press for help, and a record of what happened.
Duress is the feature that justifies the fleet on its own. A held button opens the officer's microphone to the control room and flags the talkgroup, so an operator can hear what is happening before anyone has explained it. Priority and emergency call push that transmission to the front of the queue instead of waiting for a gap.
Everything then routes through emergency alarm management, so an alert is acknowledged, assigned and closed rather than shouted into the air. Pair it with voice recording and the incident has a timestamped audio record for the debrief, the client report and any dispute that follows.
For patrols spread across a city, Motorola WAVE PTX carries the same duress and location behaviour over the cellular network, so a lone officer at a remote site is no worse off than one standing in front of the control room.
- Duress button opens the mic to the control room
- Priority and emergency call jump the talkgroup queue
- GPS shows who is nearest to the incident, not who answers first
- Guard tour and check-in prove the patrol was actually walked
- Recorded audio settles disputes weeks after the shift
- Body worn cameras de-escalate first, provide evidence second
By Posture
Static post, mobile patrol, control room.
The same incident looks different from each of these positions, and each needs a different set of capabilities from the system. Here is what we build for each one.
Static Guarding
Fixed posts, doors and gatehouses
One site, known geography, predictable shift pattern. The priority is cheap reliable voice, coverage into the awkward parts of the building, and proof the patrol was walked.
Mobile Patrol
Vehicles, alarm response and multi-site runs
Wide geography, unpredictable calls, often a single officer per vehicle. Location and network coverage matter more than raw transmit power.
Control Room
The operator holding all of it together
One console, every talkgroup, every alert and every location. This is where response time is actually decided and where the record of the shift is kept.
Before You Buy
The questions security managers put to us.
Licensing, duress, recording, coverage and hire. If your contract has a requirement not covered here, put it in the form below and we will answer it directly.
Do security guards need a licensed radio, or is licence-free enough? It depends on the post, and most fleets end up mixed.
Licence-free UHF is fine for a single site with a small team: a gatehouse, a door team, a one-off event detail. The channels are shared with the public, so it is not suitable for anything sensitive.
A licensed apparatus licence gives you a private channel, better range through a repeater, and a fleet that cannot be casually monitored. We are ARCIA and ACMA accredited and handle the licence application and frequency coordination. Have a look at the radios we supply for both tiers.
How does a duress alarm actually reach the control room? The radio flags the talkgroup and opens the officer's microphone.
Pressing and holding the emergency button sends an alert carrying the officer's radio ID, and on GPS-enabled fleets their location. The radio then transmits automatically for a set period, so the operator hears the situation without the officer needing to speak.
On the dispatch side the alert has to be acknowledged and cleared by a person, which is what emergency alarm management is for. Without that step an alarm can be heard and forgotten in a busy room.
Can radio calls be recorded for incident review? Yes, with timestamped audio tied to radio IDs.
Digital systems can record talkgroup traffic against a time and a radio ID, so a shift can be replayed as a sequence rather than reconstructed from memory. That is useful for debriefs, client reporting, insurance and complaints.
Our voice recording option pairs with the dispatch console. Retention periods, access control and privacy obligations are a policy decision on your side, and worth settling before the system goes live.
Will radios work in a basement car park or a fire stairwell? Not by default. Those areas need coverage brought to them.
Basements, plant levels, lift shafts and fire-isolated stairwells are the places officers are most often alone and least often covered. Reinforced concrete stops both radio and mobile signal, and a rooftop antenna will not reach down there.
The fix is an in-building antenna run, a repeater or a distributed antenna system sized to the zones that fail. We survey the building first so the spend goes where the coverage gap actually is.
Can one talkgroup cover patrols across a whole city? Over the cellular network, yes. Over one repeater, no.
A single repeater covers a defined footprint. Once patrols are crossing a metropolitan area, keeping them on one channel means either a repeater network or push-to-talk over cellular.
For most guarding companies the cellular route is simpler and cheaper: no infrastructure, national coverage and GPS included. Radio over cellular can also bridge those patrol units into a licensed site fleet, so a guard at a fixed post and a patrol driver share a conversation during an alarm response.
Can we hire radios for an event or a short-term contract? Yes. Pre-programmed, delivered, collected afterwards.
Event details, festival crowd management and short-term contracts rarely justify buying handsets. Our hire fleet ships pre-programmed with chargers and earpieces, and scales to the size of the detail.
If you run events regularly, the same equipment logic applies as on our events page, where hire against buy is worked through in more detail.
Are body worn cameras worth it for guarding contracts? Usually, and the de-escalation matters more than the footage.
A visible camera changes how a confrontation starts. Announcing that an interaction is being recorded takes the heat out of a lot of situations before anyone is hurt, which is the outcome you actually want.
When it does escalate, the footage supports the officer's account and the client's report. Our body worn camera range includes docking and evidence management. Retention, access and disclosure need a written policy before deployment, and we will talk you through the practical side of that.
Who We Equip
Guarding operations we fit out regularly.
Response time means something different on a shopping centre contract than it does on a remote alarm response run. These are the operations we specify for most often.
Contract Guarding Companies
Multiple client sites, rotating rosters and equipment that has to move between contracts. We build fleets that can be reprogrammed and reissued rather than replaced each time a contract changes.
Mobile Patrol and Alarm Response
Single-officer vehicles covering a wide run overnight. Network push-to-talk keeps them on one talkgroup, GPS gives the control room a position, and duress covers the officer at the far end of the route.
Shopping Centre and Retail Security
Loss prevention, centre management and cleaning all sharing a talkgroup structure, with basement and dock coverage handled properly. Related to how we equip retail teams on the shop floor.
Event, Venue and Crowd Management
Door teams, pit crews, roaming supervisors and a temporary control point. Nearly always a hire fleet, sized to the crowd and returned afterwards. See our events approach for the hire against buy comparison.
Critical Infrastructure and Corporate Sites
Gatehouse, perimeter, access control and contractor escorting on sites where the tenant has its own compliance regime. Frequently specified alongside data centre coverage work, and alongside the screening and airside teams covered on our airports page.
In-House Security and Emergency Teams
Hospitals, campuses, councils and large employers running their own officers and wardens. Duress, all-call and evacuation are the core requirement, and some of these fleets sit close to law enforcement specifications.
Talk It Through
Tell us how your posts and patrols are actually structured
We will work out which officers need which tier, where coverage will fail, and what duress and recording should look like on your contract. Straight answers on cost, and a free system evaluation if you want the current fleet assessed first.