A Critical Mission: Communication at Large Events like the Pope's Visit By Mike Devente

Hours from now, after 31 years, a Pope will return to Colombia. This occasion, more than a religious milestone, is a large event where security is the priority. Mission-critical communications are indispensable for security agencies, especially at times when networks are clogged with traffic, as will be the case in Colombia over the next few days.

In a matter of hours, 34,000 police officers and soldiers will guard the routes Pope Francis travels on his visit to Colombia and will be responsible for controlling the excitement of the approximately 4.5 million people who are expected to come into contact with the Pope during his tour of four Colombian cities: Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena and Villavicencio.

When you have to handle events like the one scheduled for September 7th, which is expected to draw 600,000 people to Bogotá's Simón Bolivar Park or the arrival of nearly one million people at the Olaya Herrera Airport in Medellín, the management of communications cannot be left by the wayside. In Bogotá alone there will be four Unified Command Posts (UCPs) installed by the Police in four locations in Bogotá. Colombia's security agencies will be on the front lines of this far-reaching operation, with communications support from Motorola Solutions. The Police's radios, with their emblematic green color, will be seen used by officers throughout the tour.

The Ally at Large Events

Whether we are talking about a sporting event like the FIFA World Cup or the Olympic Games, or the visit of an important global figure, as is the case here, interoperability between security agencies, enormous stability and robust technologies are attributes that are not only desirable but indispensable in the success of a security operation of these dimensions.

The mission-critical solutions provided by Motorola Solutions have regularly been an ally of public safety agencies at large global events. Our radio communication systems are designed to provide secure and integrated voice and data communications, which are not available with commercial systems.

In Latin America, most public safety forces have chosen our mission-critical solutions for their voice communications platform. Some countries have already begun to take yet another step forward with new technological solutions where

voice is complemented with even greater data capabilities through broadband solutions (LTE).

For example, in Brazil, for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, more than 16,000 new portable, mobile and fixed radios developed by Motorola Solutions were used to address the critical communication needs of security, emergency and defense personnel caring for millions of visitors and residents of Rio de Janeiro. Also, for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, our challenge was to integrate the 12 host cities not only geographically but also in terms of unified communications for the Army, the National Security Force and the police forces of every State. In Brasilia, the defense agencies had private LTE provided by Motorola Solutions, which allowed them to use of the entire transmission capacity of the network in real time, thereby reducing response times and improving the effectiveness of decision making considerably. These are just a few examples of how Latin America is taking critical communications seriously. Motorola Solutions will continue to participate in these key moments in the history providing the most robust and secure communications platforms for security agencies. In the coming days, we will prove, once again, the reliability of our solutions with the Pope's visit Colombia.