The Ministry of Transport has recently officially approved and released two industry standards for maritime safety communications: Technical Requirements for the Maintenance and Repair of Digital Selective Calling Systems at Coastal and River Radio Stations and Interface Specifications for Maritime Safety Communication Systems. Led by the Tianjin Communications Centre of the Northern Navigation Support Centre, with collaborative input from multiple organisations, the two standards will officially come into effect on August 1 and September 1, 2026, respectively, marking an important breakthrough in the standardisation and cross-institutional collaborative innovation of navigation support in the northern maritime region.

To address gaps in the standardisation of maritime safety communications and support the construction of a transportation powerhouse, the Tianjin Communications Centre fully leveraged its strengths as a maritime communications hub in the northern region and advanced the intensive work of formulating the two industry standards to a high standard. The JT/T 624—2026 standard, which took nearly three years to revise, represents a comprehensive upgrade and enhancement of the previous JT/T 624—2005 standard that had been in use for over two decades. Based on the current realities of the maritime communications industry, the new standard addresses technical deficiencies in the operation and maintenance of DSC systems. It further standardises the equipment operation and maintenance procedures for coastal and river radio stations nationwide, effectively enhancing the quality of equipment maintenance and the efficiency of fault handling, and comprehensively strengthening the all-weather support capability for maritime distress communications. This lays a firm technical foundation for the safety of river and sea shipping, as well as maritime emergency rescue.

The other entirely new standard, JT/T 1597—2026, was jointly developed by the Tianjin Communications Centre in partnership with multiple research institutes and technology enterprises. This standard focuses on the pain points of interconnectivity in maritime safety communication systems. It unifies interface protocols for seven major categories of maritime safety communication services and restructures the system into a three-tier hierarchical architecture, effectively resolving challenges such as poor interoperability between coastal radio station equipment and data silos. It fully activates the collaborative operational effectiveness of coastal stations, enabling efficient cross-sea-area safety information flow and unified dispatching of emergency signals. The release of this standard fills a gap in the domestic standardisation of maritime safety communication system integration and data exchange, providing core technical support for the industry's upgrade toward networking, intelligence, and integration, and comprehensively enhancing the level of maritime search and rescue and vessel navigation safety.

It is understood that following the implementation of the two new standards, they will comprehensively regulate the safety communication operation and maintenance work of coastal and river radio stations across the country, open up fast transmission channels for distress information across different sea areas, and place particular emphasis on strengthening the all-weather emergency communication support capability for key waters such as the Bohai Bay and Arctic shipping routes, thereby further refining a modern maritime communication standards system incorporating BeiDou autonomous technology.