Emergency call button

Yes, in the South Tyrol example a backup battery in the call point bridges a power cut of up to 48 hours. The base stations are also located at sites with emergency power. Because the mioty radio protocol needs very little energy, the network can run on backup power for a long time. Processing is local and redundant, so alarms arrive even without the public internet.

The alarm travels by radio from the call point to a base station and on to a local service and application centre, which forwards it via existing alarm servers to the responsible volunteer fire brigade. In South Tyrol, the 333 call points are installed at the municipal fire stations. The solution adds a return channel from the public to the existing paging system.

It depends on area and terrain, but thanks to long radio range only a few stations are needed even in the mountains. For the whole province of South Tyrol, covering 7,400 km², 50 mioty base stations are planned, and about half were installed by November 2025. They sit on ridges or towers. Many call points reach several base stations at once, which provides redundancy.

Call points with their own radio network keep working when mobile networks or the internet fail, for example after storms or large-scale power cuts. In South Tyrol, coverage gaps in valleys and gorges add to the problem. Cellular solutions were ruled out because of their high energy demand, and other LPWAN technologies lacked the required resilience. Swissphone's network is therefore independent of public networks.