ARCIA update: plans for 2025

Can you believe it’s 2025? I hope all our members enjoyed the festive season.

The first thing you need to do this year is head to the ARCIA events page, https://arcia.org.au/events/.

For the first time, ARCIA will be holding a Sundowner event in Hobart on 20 February. It’s great to welcome Tasmanians to our event calendar; with a long history in radio communications it may have been a small market, but it has always been vibrant, and we are delighted to host an event on the Apple Isle. If you are in any way connected to the wireless communications industry, please reach out and join in.

ARCIA will also be holding a mixture of workshop, conference and networking events in Perth on 2–3 April, Sydney on 28–29 May, Brisbane on 23–24 July, Adelaide on 11 September, and finally the annual gala dinner in Melbourne on 15 October. There are also many other Sundowners, training and other events happening, so make the most of them.

This will be the biggest annual program that ARCIA has ever undertaken, and Paul Davis will be looking for new and interesting content to include. Please reach out to the CEO if you have any ideas or content you would like to share, or if there are topics you would like to know more about; ask and we will try to find suitable conference presentations to suit.

It’s been over 10 years since I started writing these articles and if I read them back, we see the same themes over and over again. LMR is dying and will be replaced by 4G, natural disasters and subsequent ‘what went wrong’ recommendations, skills shortages, ACMA spectrum regulation changes and what seems like government inaction on Public Safety Mobile Broadband. As an organisation representing your interests, ARCIA has always tried to be involved and present independent responses in a transparent format; your voice has been heard.

With the benefit of hindsight, it feels like the situation for our industry is becoming clearer. The need for critical communications is growing in all sectors, the role of new IP-connected network topologies is now common, and manufacturers are investing in new products. The LMR market itself is predicted to grow across the globe to 2030. The industry is also seeing the adaption of many new and advanced systems to help users communicate over multiple networks with hybrid devices and systems. Over 2025 it will be interesting to observe phone direct-to-satellite technology in action and the potential for change that this provides. Governments are working with many critical industries, especially on the cybersecurity front, and we observe a lot of hard work going into Public Safety Mobile Broadband.

On the skills shortage, post COVID this is now across all sectors. The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates the Australian population will cross over 30 million sometime in 2030. Our industry needs to invest in training if we are going to meet the growing demands of the market, the complexity of the systems we provide and aging of the existing technical workforce. ARCIA is working to further the skills of our membership; approximately 200 members took advantage of these courses in 2024 and we hope to see many more over this year.

As always, our gala dinner last year in Melbourne was a significant event, and it gave me great pleasure to confer life membership on Geoff Spring. Geoff has been a long-time advocate for better public safety communications through his working life and more lately at The University of Melbourne, as well as a huge contributor to ARCIA working groups.

Finally, the committee will be gathering in Sydney for our annual planning day in February to set the agenda for the year. We are very fortunate that committee members can make time available to participate in this important day.

Hamish Duff, President, Australian Radio Communications Industry Association.

Top image credit: iStock.com/SerGRAY