Backhaul: the industry 25 and 10 years ago (January 2018)

25 YEARS AGO. The cover of the February/March 1993 issue of What’s New in Radio Communications featured the Philips Mobile Data Control Unit, designed and manufactured in Australia and compatible with the Philips PRM8030 mobile radio. The unit had a four-line, 40-character display and could store 160 lines of text. Elsewhere in the magazine, we reported on Ericsson Australia being awarded a $38m contract to supply mobile equipment for AOTC’s analog mobile network, with most of the gear to be manufactured at the company’s Broadmeadow’s plant. Nokia Telescommunications was handed a contract from OTC Maritime to supply Actionet trunked mobile radio for its Victorian Public Sector Trunked Mobile Radio Network, including seven mobile exchanges, a system exchange and equipment for more than one hundred 160 MHz base station sites. And Philips was awarded a $10m contract with the State Rail Authority of NSW to supply a statewide voice and data network for its locomotives.

10 YEARS AGO. The cover of the January/February 2008 issue of Radio Comms Asia-Pacific featured the GME TX4800U 25W UHF waterproof portable radio, fully designed and manufactured at the company’s (then) facility at Gladesville. Elsewhere in this issue we reported on Brett Smythe being appointed managing director of Tait Oceana and WCDMA reaching 70% market share of commercial 3G networks worldwide. GME’s Neil Johnson wrote about the use of UHF for telemetry in remote water management, and we had a case study on Sydney Water using 900 MHz frequency-hopping, spread-spectrum radio to carry pump control signals along a 9 km-long effluent pipeline. Another case study described a VoIP system supplied by Omnitronics for an offshore oil rig 200 km off the coast of Malaysia. We also reported on the inaugural Radio Comms Connect conference, held in late 2007 in Melbourne, at which two themes were prominent. The first theme was ‘Who said two-way radio was dead?’ and the second was the pressing need for new talent in the industry. Déjà vu all over again.

Image courtesy GME.

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