Friday fragments - comms news from around the web for 14 February 2014

A round-up of the week's critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 14 February 2014.

Buzz off. Fluorescent lighting made by one of the world's biggest companies, and installed in one of the largest office buildings in Los Angeles, is causing interference on an LTE network owned by one of the world's largest telcos. The fluoros, made by GE, have been plagued by a bad batch of ballasts. Installed in the Ernst & Young Plaza, the buzzy ballast has been interfering with Verizon's LTE network and has been reported to the FCC. The property manager has 60 days to fix it, or face fines.

Saudi Arabia gets LTE-Advanced. Saudi Telecom Company has launched what it says is the nation's first LTE-Advanced network, with the aim of providing data rates of 1 Gbps. The company had 7000 LTE sites in October 2013 and hopes to reach 90% of the population by the end of 2014.

Poland cancels LTE auction. Poland's Office of Electronic Communications (UKE) was forced to cancel its auction of frequencies in the 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 2.5 GHz and 2.6 GHz bands due to a technical problem with the auction rules. Fearing challenges to the results if the auction went ahead, UKE President Magdalena Gaj decided to call it off and start again. “My obligation as a regulatory authority is to ensure that all market players may conduct their business in [a] stable and certain environment," she said. Not everyone is happy with way the process is being handled - telco Polkomtel says it may boycott the auction due to provisions which it says might limit its chances of winning a bid.

One of the last Soviets to fall. An iconic 90-year-old Soviet era antenna tower might soon be pulled down. The 148-metre-high Shukhov Radio and Television Tower is in a state of disrepair and some people are concerned that it could fall down - it is surrounded by residential buildings. But the great-grandson of the engineer who built it opposes dismantling the tower and says it should be preserved.

The Shukhov Radio and Television Tower. Courtesy Maxim Fedorov.

Tower collapses; three killed. Three of four workers who were up a radio tower in West Virginia were killed when the tower collapsed, taking a small tower down with it in the process. Two of the three men were 20 metres up the tower, while the other was 7 metres up. Authorities are not yet sure why the tower fell. An investigation is underway.

US Army radios in trouble. A report into US Army communications from the Director of Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) has found that the service's portable radios are not working as well as they should. The Army uses two kinds of radios: the Rifleman Radio (from General Dynamics and Thales) and the Manpack Radio (General Dynamics and Rockwell Collins). DOT&E says Manpack “has not yet demonstrated improvements in a realistic test environment" after being found wanting in 2012. Meanwhile, the Rifleman - the Army's most widespread radio - “demonstrated numerous suitability issues that contributed to soldiers concluding that this radio was not yet acceptable for combat" in its current form