Backhaul, August 2015 — the industry 25 and 10 years ago

Backhaul takes you on a trip down memory lane as we look at what was happening in the critical communications field 25 and 10 years ago.

25 YEARS AGO. The cover of the August/September 1990 issue of What’s New in Radio Communications featured the IFR FM/AM 1600S Communications Service Monitor from Vicom. This device was the commercial version of the AN/GRM-114B developed for the US Army to test the SINCGARS frequency-hopping tactical radio. Elsewhere in the magazine, Kenwood Electronics was reported to be expanding its Australian operations with the addition of an $8m, 4000 m² warehouse at Australia Centre in Homebush, Sydney. A full-page Kenwood ad for the TK-230, TK-330, TK-705 and TK-805 radios was headlined “Move up to 1995’s communications equipment!” In other news, the Philips Radio Communication Systems PRM80 mobile radio series had just won an Australian Design Award; coincidentally, those same radios were the subject of a $100,000 contract with the Philippines National Bank to establish a radio network to keep branches connected during not-infrequent natural disasters, with their auto identify and selcall features being particularly useful.

10 YEARS AGO. The Simoco SRM9022 and SRP9130 P25 radios featured on the cover of the July/August 2005 issue of Radio Comms Asia-Pacific. The 9000-series radios were multimode, being P25, MPT1327 and analog PMR. Inside the magazine, Bruce Jeffrey from Icom opined that “the imminent release of fully compliant APCO P25 standard equipment in Australia is arguably the most significant advancement in public safety radio communications since the allocation and national adoption of the present 64 UHF channels used by our state and federal police forces”. Plus, the ACA (forerunner of the ACMA) announced that it had banned devices that could jam RNSS signals, and also published its 2005 Australian Radiofrequency Spectrum Plan, based on ITU recommendations.