Backhaul, May 2016: the industry 10 and 25 years ago

Tuesday, 31 May, 2016

Take 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 June/July 1991 issue of What’s New in Radio Communications featured the Maxon SP 2000 series of VHF and UHF handheld transceivers, which featured surface-mount technology and milspec manufacturing standards. GPT-Sepac was reported as winning a contract to supply more than 1000 mobile radios to the Silvertop Taxi Company in Melbourne, while Philips won a $1m-plus contract from the Queensland Government for mobile radios, base stations and other gear for the state’s emergency services. OTC launched the OTC Fleetcoms mobile radio service, featuring a network of linked base stations covering each major metropolitan area. We also reported on an Australian world first — a successful test of satellite communications from a light aircraft.

10 YEARS AGO. The cover of the May/June 2006 issue of Radio Comms Asia-Pacific featured the Rohde & Schwarz FSH handheld spectrum analyser, which came in 3 and 6 GHz models. In this issue we also reported on Perth’s RF Innovations winning a $1m contract to supply digital multimode 100 W paging transmitters for the Victorian Government’s statewide Emergency Alerting System. Also in Victoria, the government was embarking on a project to install wireless networks at more than 100 ambulance stations using 802.11a and Bluetooth technologies. Richardson Electronics was reported as opening a sales office in Nanjing, China, and Tait Radio had been signed up as official radio supplier to the Emirates New Zealand America’s Cup syndicate. We also reported on what was thought at the time to be the world’s longest broadband wireless link — an 86 km-long hop — connecting the Ballarat and Geelong branches of radiology company Lake Imaging. EM Solutions and MIMP were involved, installing a 40 Mbps full-duplex link, with a 2.4 m dish mounted at the 70 m mark of a 122 m-high tower belonging to Geelong radio station KRock.