The Philippine National Police (PNP), under its new chief, Gen. Nicolas Torre III, is undergoing changes to improve local law enforcement communications. Torre recently committed to a five-minute police response time and shared plans to use technology to support crime-solving efforts.
At the same time, Malacañang has directed the PNP to strengthen its communication systems and improve coordination during operations.
“The traditional method of communicating has always been a challenge not just here in the Philippines, but also globally,” said Chris Ullah, lead for Global Business Development for Emergency Services at BlackBerry, in an interview with Back End News.
Ullah, who served over 30 years as a police commander and Superintendent with Greater Manchester Police, stressed the importance of multi-agency coordination.
“Any operation, exercise, or incident I’ve handled that involved multiple agencies always came with challenges,” he said. “That’s when coordination becomes crucial. Being able to respond effectively as a multi-agency unit is absolutely essential.”
BlackBerry began discussions with Philippine organizations about two years ago.
“The long-term goal has always been to build a lasting partnership, one where we grow together as the technology evolves,” Ullah said. “It’s about making sure the Philippine government and its agencies get the most out of that technology. At the heart of it, this is about partnership and trust.”
Former mobile device leader and now focused on secure communications, BlackBerry works with government, defense, emergency services, and other critical industries. The company sees the Philippines as a key growth market, aiming to support crisis communications and emergency response.
Its tools include BlackBerry SecuSUITE for encrypted government and law enforcement communications; BlackBerry AtHoc, a crisis communication platform; and BlackBerry UEM, which secures mobile devices in BYOD and commercial environments.
BlackBerry solutions are cloud-based but can also be deployed on-premises or in hybrid setups, depending on the organization’s needs.
“In my experience, organizations are moving to the cloud,” Ullah said. “That’s because if your own IT infrastructure gets compromised, and everything is hosted there, you lose all your systems. But if you have a separate, out-of-band solution, you still have a way to communicate.”
Ullah said BlackBerry has global backup systems and failover solutions, with the platform maintaining a 99.99% uptime rate.
“BlackBerry doesn’t rely on one channel of communication as it uses multiple channels, and when all of the systems fail, BlackBerry can be trusted to still get the message through, and it’s been proven time and time again with natural disasters around the globe where they use the BlackBerry solution,” he said.
Because it is cloud-based, BlackBerry does not depend on an organization’s IT infrastructure, and the Philippines’ current infrastructure would not be a limitation.
“If an agency loses connectivity, BlackBerry will still work,” he said.
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