What is the Public Safety Network?
The Public Safety Network is a new critical communications service for New Zealand’s frontline emergency services responders consisting of cellular, land mobile radio and personal alerting elements. Together, these three complementary technologies will provide the emergency services with modern, secure and resilient critical communications ecosystem enabling them to do their jobs, stay safe and support our communities.
The Public Safety Network is a significant step beyond existing radio network and cellular capabilities.
Why does New Zealand need the Public Safety Network?
Emergency services need to replace their existing analogue critical communications, many of which are obsolete, replacement parts are no longer manufactured, and existing infrastructure (towers, foundations and radio equipment) requires modernisation to meet future communication needs. They need communications that are secure, digital, resilient and reliable both for everyday use and to be ready for large emergencies, including natural disasters.
What will the new Public Safety Network mean for the emergency services?
Frontline emergency services will be able to send and receive information more securely, enable better collaboration, reducing duplication and enabling them to work together more effectively on multi-agency responses.
The ability of emergency services to communicate effectively and securely with their staff is fundamental to the safety of over 35,000 frontline responders and the communities through New Zealand that they serve.
Reliable, secure and capable communications are critical in today’s world where frontline emergency responders are confronted with a variety of challenging and stressful situations from single person emergency incidents to wide-impact regional events.
Will other organisations be able to use the Public Safety Network solutions?
NGCC's focus is on delivering the Public Safety Network solutions that it is funded to deliver for our four emergency services Agencies. However, there is scope for more public safety organisations to use the PSN Cellular Services and NGCC continues to engage with other organisations about this. In May and June 2025, we are entering a discovery phase to understand public safety sector interest and readiness to use PSN Cellular Services. This information will help inform NGCC's potential evolution and the next steps required to increase our mandate.
The PSN solutions in scope today provide a solid communication platform for the four foundation emergency services Agencies, which can be built on, evolved, and enhanced in the future - in collaboration with the Agencies, and others involved in public safety.
How will the PSN help the emergency services in large natural disasters like Cyclone Gabrielle?
The Public Safety network has been designed with features critical for emergency services when responding to incidents of the scale of Cyclone Gabrielle.
The PSN LMR network will be able to provide local communications when connectivity is lost that commercial networks such as cellular are not able to provide. This means people using the PSN LMR will be able to communicate among each other even if they are not able to communicate to their communication centre.
PSN LMR will also enable the different emergency services to communicate with each other on a single, secure network helping with their safety and the effectiveness of any operation they are working on together.
PSN Cellular Roaming will mean the emergency services will be able to move between Spark and One NZ if either network is down to increase their access to mobile communications. PSN Cellular Priority will mean the emergency services will get priority access to the cellular network above all other calls.
Fire and Emergency NZ and Hato Hone St John continue to have access to existing personal alerting technology that will be stabilised to support their volunteers to respond in remote communities.
What is being done to keep existing radio networks going?
Work is being done to ensure existing radio networks remain fit for purpose and are maintained until all Agencies have transitioned to the new Public Safety Network's Land Mobile Radio (LMR) network.
Transition to the new LMR network will be done safely and on a regional basis to ensure there is minimal disruption to the public or emergency services.
When will the Public Safety Network solutions be in place?
The first element of the Public Safety Network went live in July 2023 on time and on budget with the successful launch of PSN Cellular Roaming. PSN Cellular Priority went live in December 2024 - also on time and on budget.
The new digital Land Mobile Radio network is in the site acquisition and build phase and the Agencies are installing new radio equipment in thousands of buildings and vehicles across the country. The network is being delivered through a progressive regional roll-out ready for the emergency services to migrate to. Delivery of Canterbury, Wellington and Auckland will happen in 2025, followed by the project’s remaining eight regions throughout 2025 and 2026.
What is the cost of the Public Safety Network?
To deliver the project, in 2022 Cabinet approved an investment of $1.4 billion to be spent over 10 years. This investment will fund the build and operating of the Public Safety Network capabilities and for the LMR network, migrating the emergency services to the new network, including to provide new devices for staff, stations, and vehicles.
Funding for the Public Safety Network will come from Agency contributions and Cabinet-approved government funding.
What is Tait Systems NZ contracted to do?
Tait Systems NZ is contracted to deliver a digital Land Mobile Radio network built with sufficient resilience to be relied on as a network of last resort for users. TSNZ will also provide the new radio devices for frontline responders. and their buildings and vehicles.
Digital Land Mobile Radio supports ‘push to talk’ communications which are used extensively by emergency services, and it provides location services, and is encrypted and secure. It offers new safety features for responders.
What is Hourua contracted to do?
Hourua is contracted to deliver Cellular Priority and Roaming services which are improving existing cellular network coverage and resilience through a multi-network Spark and One NZ solution.
Hourua is ensuring emergency communications take priority over other mobile users on the Spark and One NZ cellular networks when they are congested or degraded, for example, in the case of a significant natural disaster.
Hourua will is enabling responders to move across the Spark and One NZ networks which is increasing cellular coverage for emergency services and significantly improving their ability to access mobile broadband if there are network faults or other outages.
Will the Public Safety Network give members of the public improved cellular coverage for their personal use?
Because only emergency services are using the Public Safety Network, the public will not gain any increases in cellular coverage for their personal use.
There will be no new mobile transmission sites built for the Public Safety Network; instead, cellular coverage for the emergency services will be increased because they will be enabled by Hourua’s work to roam across the Spark and One NZ networks creating a 6.5% uplift in usable coverage (28,000 square kilometres) meaning emergency services gain coverage at an additional approximately 15,000 households nationwide.
What Cabinet approvals have there been?
In April 2020, Cabinet approved a request to go to market to procure the products and services required to deliver a Public Safety Network.
The initial request recommended a cellular based solution which after rigorous international research and benchmarking was found to be not technically feasible or affordable to meet the resilience and coverage needed due to New Zealand’s geographic environment.
The work was completed through a robust, comprehensive RFP (Request for Proposal) process that engaged across the emergency communications industries both within NZ and internationally.
In August 2022 Cabinet approved an Implementation Business Case for the Public Safety Network that enables Next Generation Critical Communications to execute contracts with two preferred vendors.