Comms Connect Melbourne 2024: conference highlights

The Southern Hemisphere’s premier critical communications event, Comms Connect, has made a spectacular return to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre with a two-day conference and exhibition on 16–17 October, plus preconference workshops from the Australian Radio Communications Industry Association (ARCIA) and the Australasian Critical Communications Forum (ACCF) on 15 October.

The event came in the wake of several recent critical communications milestones — including the 10-year plan to expand and upgrade the FirstNet public safety network (PSN) in the USA, the recent RFI for Public Safety Mobile Broadband (PSMB) here in Australia, and the release of the Senate report into the Optus Network Outage — all of which were discussed in depth at the show. It was also held not long after Hurricanes Helene and Milton rocked North America, meaning the topic of disaster resilience was front of mind for many.

“We witnessed two days of high energy and activity in our largest ever expo space, with many exhibitors making extra effort to add colour and new design features to their custom stands,” said Comms Connect Events Director Geoff Hird after the event’s conclusion. “The conference rooms were also busy, with more than 300 delegates benefiting from the wisdom of more than 70 industry experts from across the region and the globe.”

Combating outages

Last year’s Comms Connect Melbourne was held just weeks before the infamous Optus outage, which of course prompted the Australian Government to improve telco industry accountability and strengthen public access to Triple Zero — but it turns out that wasn’t the only large-scale comms outage of 2023. At this year’s conference, British APCO’s Chief Operating Officer, Duncan Swan, recounted the UK’s Public Emergency Call Service outage from 25 June 2023 — which included a 67-minute period where a proportion of 999 calls were disconnected, a 79-minute period where all 999 calls failed to connect due to the backup system not being activated, and an 8-hour period where call handlers had to process some information (such as location) manually. Going further back, Swan recalled how in the space of 15 months (from April 2021 to July 2022), Canadian telecom giant Rogers experienced two major network outages, caused by a software update and a maintenance update respectively, which rendered 911 services inaccessible for many of its 12 million+ customers.

According to Swan, telco companies shouldn’t necessarily be embarrassed about outages — but they should be embarrassed about not having an incident action plan, not having backup systems that are regularly tested, and not adequately communicating with the public. And while none of the above incidents were caused by cyber attacks, CyberCure’s Vanessa Leite noted that broadband and P25 radio networks are increasingly being targeted by cybercriminals, so it is important that comms providers have at least basic security hygiene and are prepared for the worst-case scenario. This can also be applied to natural disaster planning, with Jim Nelson, President and CEO of Prism-IPX, emphasising the importance of achieving resiliency by using parallel and redundant infrastructure, each supporting its own unique protocol — so that if one method is compromised or damaged, a second or third can be used in its place. Finally, in addition to backups and cybersecurity, Queensland Police Service’s Garry Kerr emphasised the importance of technical support, which is often not thought about when systems are working as they should.

Widening coverage

Minimising outages is all well and good, but what about those areas that don’t have coverage in the first place? Australia is after all a large country, with lots of sparsely populated areas, which can make it difficult to justify comms infrastructure in those areas. Khalid Salim from the NSW Telco Authority (NSWTA) spoke of the Authority’s efforts to expand the footprint of the NSW PSN, from 55.69% land coverage and 99.07% population coverage at the time of writing to an end goal of 85% land coverage and 99.8% population coverage — which still leaves 127,000 km² of the state uncovered, because it would be simply impossible to maintain geo-redundancy on the current system with 100% coverage. Critical Communications Finland Coordinator Tero Personen said his country’s own PSN, dubbed Virve, has a similar issue, with little coverage in the north due to the population being mainly concentrated in the south (though a planned network upgrade seeks to remedy this somewhat).

The answer, according to Telstra’s Natalie Kolodziej, lies in satellite connectivity, which offers benefits including ubiquitous coverage, portability, adaptability and resiliency. According to Kolodziej, there are already more than 3000 satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), with satellite-to-device capability predicted to arrive in the next 12–18 months. And while she admitted that satellites are expensive to send up, and can be unreliable in indoor areas, the technology is particularly useful after natural disasters (such as the recent hurricanes) and during major events. Indeed, non-terrestrial networks have proven invaluable for policing in Western Australia, said Brett Pearson from the WA Police Force, enabling officers to look up information on vehicles and suspects as they drive around what is one of the largest police jurisdictions in the world. Lincoln Mackay, from Hourua (the company contracted to deliver New Zealand’s PSN), added that satellite connectivity would be useful in remote areas of New Zealand — as the country has terrestrial land coverage of only 60% at present — while FirstNet’s Brian Hobson said he hopes to integrate satellite-to-device into the network in future.

Emerging technologies and data collection

Satellite connectivity is obviously becoming more and more mainstream, but what about those technologies that are a little further away from common use? At the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) division of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), researchers like Monika Bochert conduct R&D to envision the next generation of technologies for first responders (examples include using LiDAR to create 3D maps of spaces, and training machine-learning models to identify objects such as fire suppression systems within these 3D maps). Such technologies would be invaluable tools during dangerous missions, and could indeed replace first responders in some situations. Indeed, Kylie De Courteney from NSWTA noted that the UK already has fireproof drones; in South Korea, LiDAR is being used to alert the authorities when there is a risk of dangerous overcrowding; and in the US, Boston Dynamics’ robot dog ‘Spot’ has been used to collect information in hazardous situations to pass on the police.

For these and other technologies of the future, the transmission of data such as geolocation and video will be key, with Hobson arguing that data will play a bigger role in the future than voice. And while protocols such as LoRaWAN may be sufficient for tracking and monitoring applications, GSMA’s Terence Wong noted that 5G will be needed to provide the high uplink required for video and virtual/extended reality; the upgrade of PSNs such as FirstNet to 5G will thus expand their capabilities significantly. Of course, Bochert noted that more data will inevitably lead to more complexity, as such data must be legally and safely transmitted and stored. The good news, according to De Courteney, is that once enough data has been gathered, it could potentially be used for training AI systems to assist first responders with decision-making — so long as it is well-structured and relevant.

According to Hird, “Comms Connect Melbourne 2024 underlined the fact the critical comms sector is on a strong growth curve” — one which shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. One thing’s for sure — Comms Connect will be back in 2025 to continue the discussion, with editions in Christchurch (June) and Melbourne (October). Until then, keep an eye out for updates at www.comms-connect.com.au.