Comms Connect Melbourne 2015 preview

Don’t miss this world-class line-up of speakers, workshops and exhibitors.

The 9th national Comms Connect conference and exhibition is on again in Melbourne. More than 1500 people are expected to attend, from a broad range of industry sectors, including utilities, public safety, government (local, state and federal), transport, mining, oil and gas, security, defence, backhaul and telemetry, and the wider commercial environment.

The conference will feature individual presentations, panel sessions, keynotes and workshops covering a myriad of topics of interest to everyone in the critical communications field: latest technologies; regulation and government policy; case studies; security; the Internet of Things; and many more.

With 80+ exhibitors and 75+ speakers taking part, Melbourne’s Convention and Exhibition Centre will be the place to be from 1 to 3 December 2015.

Keynote and plenary addresses

The organisers have secured a number of very high-profile keynote speakers to begin the sessions on the first and second days, including:

• Rod Gilmour, Chairman of the NSW Telco Authority, who will speak about strategic developments in operational communications;
• Dale McFee, Deputy Minister of Corrections and Policing, Ministry of Justice, Government of Saskatchewan, Canada, who will speak of the importance of information management in building a national community safety model;
• Michael Lawrey, Executive Director, Defence Engagement, Telstra, who will present on the topic of critical communications in the defence landscape; and
• Declan Ganley, CEO, Rivada Networks, who will speak on the topic of dynamic spectrum arbitrage: a new model for building, sharing and paying for public safety mobile broadband.

There are too many speakers to list them all here (the full range can be seen on the Comms Connect website, comms-connect.com.au), but here is selection that covers a range of topics:

• Queensland’s Government Wireless Network. This will the subject of two panel sessions, the first of which will be on 2 December and have three representatives from Mingara Australasia (Gerard Cusick, Andrew Wellwood and Alistair Hope), who will discuss operational governance in a non-partitioned trunked radio environment. This will be followed the next day by a panel comprising Margaret Kimber (Department of Science, Information Technology and Innovation), Acting Superintendent Paul Smeath (Queensland Fire and Emergency Service), Inspector Thomas Hassall (Queensland Ambulance Service) and Acting Inspector Sean Maskell (Queensland Police Service), who will lead a discussion on providing a secure, fully integrated communications network for police and emergency services.
• The impact of disruptive technologies on the radio industry, which will be presented by Lawrence McKenna, Telecommunications Section Manager, Wood & Grieve Engineers. (See his opinion piece in the Spectrum column in the Sep/Oct issue of Critical Comms.)
• Andrew Findlay from Vertel will speak about the rise of virtualisation — is it a threat or opportunity for land mobile radio?
• Jan Thompson, Head of Public Safety, Industry and Society at Ericsson, will speak about multiagency awareness: capturing and making sense of data for safety and transport applications.
• David Jarvis, UXC Saltbush, will present on the topic of cyber attacks — target profiling and protection. This presentation went down very well at the mini Comms Connect Brisbane industry day earlier this year.

Plus there will be presentations and case studies on communications in motorsport; body-worn video; PMR and telemetry for utilities; satellite M2M; Wi-Fi and CCTV for councils; GIS dispatch solutions; 400 MHz implementation; Next-Gen 000; mining; SCADA; TETRA for gas pipelines; enhanced P25 ecosystems using open standards; and many more.

Having received numerous requests to help explain Australia’s vast and complex communications system of networks, Comms Connect decided to develop a National Communications Interoperability Mind Map. Jennifer Goddard, Director of the Buzan Centre, and co-founder of Mindwerx International, will be attending and will be soliciting input to the mind map throughout the conference. She will present her results in the final session on the second day.

Training workshops

Six workshops will be held on Tuesday, 1 December, which is the day before the main conference sessions commence. The topics will be:

• Advanced radio over IP
• Dispelling the myths of microwave radio
• Evolutionary paths from 2G PMR to critical LTE
• Public safety mobile broadband: governance, operating models and funding
• Will the DMR product manufacturers now have to respond to use needs — is it a whole new paradigm?
• Big changes heralded with long-range digital radio: time to review what these changes will mean for public safety and business users.

These workshops tend to fill up quickly, so make sure you get your registration in as soon as possible.

ARCIA Gala Dinner and Awards ceremony

You’re also encouraged to register for the Annual Gala Dinner of the Australian Radio Communications Industry Association, which will be held on the evening of 2 December. The evening will include presentation of the national industry awards. Full registration details are available on the ARCIA website (www.arcia.org.au).

Make sure you take advantage of this once-per-year opportunity to take part in Comms Connect Melbourne, Australasia’s leading critical communications conference and exhibition, featuring a who’s who of experts from industry, government and academia.

Comms Connect New Zealand

In exciting news for the industry, the Radio Frequency Users Association of New Zealand has announced it has reached an agreement with Westwick-Farrow Media to take over the organisation of the annual conference and exhibition that takes place in Wellington, New Zealand.

“Westwick-Farrow Media is a well-known event organiser in the wireless communications sector and has been providing very successful and growing conferences in Australia in conjunction with our Australian counterpart ARCIA,” said RFUANZ Chairman David Thomson.

The new conference will be known as Comms Connect NZ and will be organised by WF Media in association with the RFUANZ. The conference will continue to address topics and developments specific for the New Zealand market, but at the same time it will benefit from international contacts Westwick-Farrow Media has developed over the years.

Paul Davis, Events Director for WF Media and lead organiser of the Comms Connect events, said, “Having worked with RFUANZ for a number of years to help promote the Wellington conference via our numerous media channels — including Critical Comms magazine and website — the team and I are very excited to be organising the show from 2016. We have existing relationships with quite a few of the 2015 exhibitors, sponsors and speakers and look forward to working with all stakeholders, especially the RFUANZ, to further develop what is already a very successful event for New Zealand radiocommunications users and industry.”

“The conference and exhibition has become an important focal point for the New Zealand radio industry and with this new arrangement in place, the RFUANZ committee has ensured that it is secured for years to come and will continue to grow,” said Thomson.

“RFUANZ will continue to organise the gala dinner on the evening of the first day of the conference, during which we will continue to honour those individuals who have made a difference to the industry.”

The Comms Connect New Zealand 2016 conference and exhibition will be held on 14 and 15 April at Te Papa Museum, Wellington, in conjunction with the RFUANZ Gala Dinner on the 14th.

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Where: Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre

When: 1 December (pre-Conference workshops), 2–3 December (Conference & Exhibition)

Web: comms-connect.com.au

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Speakers:  75+

Exhibitors: 80+

Training workshops: 6

Conference streams: Public Safety & Emergency Management, Industry and Technology