PSN Cellular Priority service now available

Police Minister, Mark Mitchell and Minister of Internal Affairs, Brooke van Velden, today officially launched the Public Safety Network (PSN) Cellular Priority service at an event in Wellington that was also attended by National Commander, Russell Wood.

Further to the launch of PSN Cellular Roaming last year, this follows a period of combined NGCC(external link) and Agency testing of PSN Cellular Priority that was completed in November.

PSN Cellular Priority gives phones or devices provisioned with PSN SIMS and QPP preferential access to the Spark and OneNZ cellular networks when there is network congestion or degradation. This new service helps devices continue to function by sending them to the front of the queue for available coverage. If necessary, the service can also delay or restrict access to network coverage for non-Public Safety Network users to ‘clear the way’ for first responder use.

In all situations though, 111 calls for help from the public will continue to have top priority access to cellular networks.

Fire and Emergency adoption of PSN Cellular Priority

Along with the other Agencies, Fire and Emergency is looking to migrate our cell phone users to the QPP Voice service first and will consider migration of phones and devices to the QPP Data service following further testing of this within our operational environment early next year.

While migration of phones onto the QPP Voice service was successfully tested prior to NGCC acceptance of the service, the Fire and Emergency PSN team is currently running a Pilot migration with a group of 22 Fire and Emergency cell phones onto the live service, prior to migration of all our work cell phones, to ensure no unexpected issues arise.

All going well we expect to start migrating the rest of our Fire and Emergency work phones following conclusion of the Pilot in mid-January 2025.

PSN Land Mobile Radio testing and installations underway

Earlier this year, Minister Mitchell launched the Mid-South Canterbury pilot network for the digital Land Mobile Radio service which is another major component of the $1.4 billion investment in the Public Safety Network for Wellington Free Ambulance, Hato Hone St John, Police and Fire and Emergency NZ.

Fire and Emergency has now installed test equipment in several of our appliances and stations in Mid-South Canterbury and has completed an initial cycle of technical equipment testing in the area. Testing will continue throughout 2025, working towards operational trials which are expected to take place late 2025/early 2026. Planning and preparation is also underway for subsequent regional migrations across the motu.

For more information about the FENZ PSN Programme, check out the Public Safety Network area on our Portal. You are also very welcome to contact the FENZ PSN team directly at PSNEnquiries@fireandemergency.nz with any questions you have, or if you would like more information.