Backhaul — July 2019

25 YEARS AGO. The cover of the August/September 1994 issue of What’s New in Radio Communications featured the “compact, rugged, cutting-edge” Kenwood TK-715 and TK-815 MPT 1327 trunked mobile radios. The units combined “all the sophisticated calling functions of today’s FM trunked communications systems into one of the smallest packages available”, featuring an 8-digit, LCD panel display. Inside the magazine we reported on Telstra announcing that 2.5 million Australians living in rural and remote areas were able to avail themselves of mobile satellite and radio services through the Satcom-M and Radphone Direct Dial solutions … the latter being described as the “first HF radio service in Australia to enable users to directly dial almost any telephone in Australia”. We also profiled a huge grocery warehouse that was keeping track of stock using “30 state-of-the-art Intermec 9465 handheld computers communicating directly through Intermec radio frequency transceivers with the company’s ICL mainframe compute”. And we reported on Telstra Mobile Satellite & Radio Services (in conjunction with Inmarsat) bringing the world closer to a “personal mobile phone revolution by [the year 2000]” by demonstrating the world’s first successful mobile satellite voice connections using a handheld terminal the size of a cellular phone.

10 YEARS AGO. The cover of the July/August 2009 issue of Radio Comms Asia-Pacific featured Tait’s TaitNet P25 digital solutions, with the company being chosen as one of only four (and the only non-US company) to participate in the US Department of Homeland Security’s P25 Compliance Assessment Program. We also reported on Standard Communications celebrating its 50th anniversary, having been established in 1959 by engineer EC (‘Ted’) Dunn. And we covered major changes planned for the 400 MHz band, with identification of a harmonised government radio band to facilitate interoperability between agencies — this development was a major proposal presented at 2009’s ACMA Radcomms conference in Sydney.

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