Conference report: Comms Connect Wellington

Industry members recently gathered in the New Zealand capital to absorb the latest information and technologies.

The first Comms Connect Wellington wrapped up on 15 April to universal praise, after two days of fascinating presentations and a bustling exhibition hall. Held in association with the Radio Frequency Users Association of New Zealand (RFUANZ), it brought together industry experts, vendors, government representatives and communications users from across New Zealand, Australia and further afield.

It was my first time back in New Zealand after more than 25 years, and I have to say I found Wellington to be a fabulous place. It has a great mix of history and modernity, reminding me very much of Melbourne or Hobart. I (and the rest of the Comms Connect team) stayed at the funky Museum Art Hotel, right across the road from the conference venue — Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand.

Te Papa is a great place: extremely modern, very easy to get around in and with lots of helpful staff… and plenty of incredible natural history and anthropological exhibitions, including an internationally renowned World War I exhibition. (The queue was too long when I tried to get in; I’ll try again next year.)

The Comms Connect exhibition was packed with displays from vendors from New Zealand and Australia. All the usual major names were there, plus quite a few that would have been new to many attendees. All the exhibitors with whom I spoke said that the event had gone very well for them.

Due to the nature of modern conferences, where concurrent streams are the name of the game, it wasn’t possible for me to attend every presentation. There were a number of lectures and panel discussions that I didn’t manage to see, and it seems invidious of me to have to leave them out, but the following is a summary of the sessions I was able to attend. (Most of the presentations are available for viewing at comms-connect.co.nz/conference-program/)

Official duties

Comms Connect Wellington was opened by a presentation from the Hon Amy Adams, Minister for Communications, who announced a number of policy decisions in relation to the future regulation of the telecommunications sector.

“Digital technologies are transforming the way New Zealanders live, work and do business,” she said. “To help reach our 2025 broadband target and to keep our economy growing, we need the right laws in place to make sure high-quality and affordable communication services are available for consumers and businesses.

“The communications sector is vastly different to the market in 2001 when the Telecommunications Act was introduced, and it’s time for our laws to catch up,” the Minister added.

The Hon Amy Adams, New Zealand’s Minister for Communications.

The Minister also announced that from 2020, “the government will move to a framework for regulating copper and fibre services that is similar to the one used for utilities like electricity lines”.

“These high-level policy decisions build on the discussion document ‘Regulating Communications for the Future’, released last year as part of the Convergence work program,” she said. “In coming months, we will continue the conversation with an options paper on the detailed design and implementation of the new framework.”

The Minister’s address was followed by an open Q&A session with two representatives from Radio Spectrum Management: Chris Brennan, compliance manager; and Fiona Johnson, senior policy advisor in the Radio Spectrum Policy & Planning Unit. Johnson observed that both New Zealand and Australia are undertaking major reviews of radio communications legislation. She noted that the New Zealand framework — which might be considered less prescriptive than Australia’s — is looking to move more towards the Australian model, while the Australian model is perhaps going to move more towards the New Zealand model. It’ll be interesting to see where they both end up.

Radio Spectrum Management’s Chris Brennan, compliance manager, and Fiona Johnson, senior policy advisor in the Radio Spectrum Policy & Planning Unit.

The modern world

Michael Hallowes, director, Government, Enterprise & Emergency Management for the Early Warning Network, gave a fascinating insight into his company’s services. Hallowes spent 30 years in UK policing before becoming the Emergency Services Commissioner for the state of Victoria and then national director of Australia’s Emergency Alert Programme.

The Early Warning Network provides weather and natural disaster warnings and other information to governments and private industry, enabling them prepare for, or work through, such emergencies.

Hallowes gave a very interesting demonstration of how footage captured by drones and vehicle-mounted cameras can be used to assess the aftermath of natural disasters, with a view to recovery operations… and also for forensic purposes.

There’s a lot more to the Early Warning Network: check out the company’s website for more information.

Superintendent Jevon McSkimming, national manager, mobility and innovation, NZ Police, gave an overview of the results of the rollout of mobile broadband devices to every member of the police force. Specifically, they have been given thousands of iPads and iPhone 6+s. These devices, and the wealth of information they make available at the user’s fingertips, along with the efficiencies gained by using voice recognition, have enabled officers to become far more productive, saving up to 30 minutes per officer, per shift. McSkimming also noted that officers had found the iPads to awkward to carry around and had almost universally chosen to rely solely upon the iPhones. “What we’re doing is making more of the desktop environment mobile,” Superintendent McSkimming told the audience.

Caroline Milligan, associate director of Emergency Management, Crest Advisory, gave a very impressive presentation on the use of social media channels by emergency services authorities to acquire and disseminate real-time information during natural disasters and other emergency events. She gave many examples of how emergency services organisations have been able to vastly improve the flow of information through simple — and, in many cases, free — off-the-shelf social media tools.

Crest Advisory’s Caroline Milligan.

Keeping it simple

Two presentations demonstrated how some use cases do not require all the bells and whistles but are best suited to more traditional solutions, albeit with the latest technology involved. Justin Lewis, technical manager at Icom NZ, gave a presentation on the evolution of radio comms at a major New Zealand car racetrack and, in particular, how the latest Icom IDAS radios with digital noise cancellation are providing vastly improved comms to the racetrack operators. Of particular benefit are the 6.25 KHz FDMA channel spacing and the operational security that digital radio provides.

Simon Coles — Motorola Solutions’ channel manager for NZ, the Pacific Islands and PNG — gave a very interesting presentation on how timber firm Dennis Hayes Logging has improved worker safety through the introduction of a new Simplex radio system. Safety is a very important issue in logging operations, with serious implications if things aren’t done the right way. Coles noted that in 2013, 10 forestry workers died in New Zealand and the country’s first forestry related manslaughter charges were laid.

Technicalities

John Yaldwyn, CTO and director of 4RF, a company that has sold radio gear into 140 countries, spoke at length of the lessons learned from data gleaned from operations of major utilities operations in the US. In particular, he spoke on managing the connection of broadband networks and IP networks to relatively narrowband radio systems, and gave many examples of how it can be done.

“In the past, narrowband radio in a way has had to apologise to the broadband system for its lack of capacity. But that’s now changing,” he said. But even though it’s changing, “it’s very important that we are aware of some of the things we need to do to systems that run on IP networks, in terms of security but most particularly in terms the actual information to be transmitted”.

4RF’s John Yaldwyn.

Chris Blunt, Axenic’s director/consulting partner, and Ahmed ElAshmawy, the company’s senior consultant, gave an interesting presentation on securing SCADA networks from attacks, pointing out the various attack vectors and what can be done to fix them.

The bigger picture

Roger Kane, managing director of Vicom, spoke of some of the seismic changes that are occurring in the industry, especially the changing nature of technology and the kind of people involved.

“I’m guessing that, being kind, the average of the people in this room is 45,” he said. “Hopefully at the end of [my] presentation, you’ll be as convinced as I am that in five years’ time, the average age will be 35. We’ve seen, I think, quite a significant change in our industry, which is going to change the kind of people who are involved in it and significantly increase the number of younger people involved.”

Ross Spearman, CTO of Tait Communications — and until recently the CTO for Ericsson in the US — spoke of how recent standardisation work, and public/private broadband initiatives, are rapidly advancing the capabilities of broadband LTE networks to serve the critical communication sector.

“People have been predicting the demise of LMR for a long time — 10, 15 years,” Spearman told the assembled audience. “With LTE, you now have another round of predictions for LMR is going to go away. I’m not going to make a prediction one way or another… I’m just going to talk about what’s going on around the world, what’s the status of standards, and really, given where we are today, what is a sensible path forward.”

As mentioned above, most of the presentations, including Spearman’s, are available on the Comms Connect Wellington website.

Tait Communications’ CTO, Ross Spearman.

Peter Clemons, founder and managing director of Quixoticity, gave a very thought-provoking presentation on the evolution of mobile communications and looked at where 4G and 5G technologies are heading. See the separate article elsewhere in this issue for a full run-down on Clemons’ presentation.

Quixoticity’s Peter Clemons.

RFUANZ

The RFUANZ annual dinner was held on the evening of the first day and was a fun event. A local comedian and magician, Brendan Dooley, provided the entertainment and MC duties, and put on a great show. The crowd needed some warming up and Dooley had to work hard to get them going, but with a bit of help from some punters who ‘volunteered’ to go up on stage and participate in his magic routines, he soon managed to break the ice and had the room in stitches. (I won’t name the volunteers, but I hope you’re still enjoying your balloon animals.)

The new RFUANZ committee had been chosen earlier that day, and outgoing president David Thomson introduced the new team, including new president Corey Weir, who is joint owner of Outback Communications in Christchurch. Weir trained as a mechatronics engineer and also completed a master’s degree in engineering management. He has five years’ project management experience and has been working in the radio communications field since 2010.

Overall, Comms Connect Wellington was very well attended — both the speaker sessions and the exhibition — had a great line-up of local and international speakers, and had a really great vibe to it. I look forward to being there again next year.