Friday fragments - comms news from around the web for 13 June 2014

A round-up of the week's critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 13 June 2014.

Counties split by river can now communicate. Once upon a time, emergency services in the Iowa counties of Linn, Cedar Rapids and Marion could speak with each other on a common radio system. But over the years, they went their separate ways and ended up on three different networks. Now they can speak to each other again, courtesy of an 800 MHz P25 trunked system from Harris.

First responders won't use FirstNet. At least not at first, argues Bill Schrier, former CTO of the City of Seattle and now OCIO for the State of Washington. Schrier says “… the first responders will not be watching video. They'll be fully engaged to make sure they don't run over pedestrians or run into other vehicles as they speed to the scene … When they arrive on the scene, they're going to leap out of the vehicle, perhaps drawing a weapon, but definitely NOT drawing their smartphone to look at images or video. They'll keep their eyes on the convenience store or the university classroom building and their hands free to react to whatever confronts them."

FirstNet's first job. 'What should FirstNet do first?' is the title of a new Potomac Institute report on FirstNet. Led by Jamie Barnett, Rear Admiral, USN (Retired), formerly the FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, the study “raises concerns about the loss of BTOP funding, increasing the uncertainty of a deployment timeline that could take more than five years, and NTIA's reluctance to date to embrace the States as key stakeholders and partners".

Canadian uni testing band 14 LTE. Simon Fraser University is to undertake research and testing for concepts for public safety broadband networks in Canada. SFU has recently acquired the Star Solutions IMPAC product, a backpackable system that combines a 4G LTE packet core network (MME, S-GW, PDN-GW, and HSS) with an integrated eNodeB functions into a battery-powered unit.

LTE approaches 250 million connections. A report from 4G Americas says that LTE deployments, devices and connections will reach 2.3 billion by 2020. Currently, LTE is deployed on 294 networks in 106 countries; commercial LTE devices span more than 1500 from 154 companies (GSA, March 2014); and LTE global connections reached 245 million at the end of March 2014 (Informa Telecoms & Media).

Intelsat takes on military comms. Intelsat plans to launch a fleet of six Epic satellites beginning next year, to introduce bandwidth five times that of commercial satellites and up to three times that of the US military's WGS satellites.

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