Friday fragments - comms news from around the web for 16 January 2015

A round-up of the week's critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 16 January 2015.

Tactical radios for the ADF. Harris Corporation has received a $38 million order to deliver Falcon III tactical radios that will provide Australia's armed forces with reliable and secure Type-1 tactical voice and data communications. The ADF is acquiring AN/PRC-152A handheld and AN/PRC-117G manpack radios to provide its forces with wideband tactical networking capabilities, as well as line-of-sight, ground-to-air and tactical satellite communications. The wideband network enables operators to send and receive tactical voice, video and data, resulting in enhanced situational awareness and real-time intelligence. In addition, the radios provide users with interoperability through legacy narrowband waveforms.

911 system shut down for a month. Following many reports of radio problems, officials in Madison, Wisconsin, have decided to shut down their new emergency radio system for a month to try and figure out what's going wrong. “We feel we can afford to shut that down for 30 days," 911 centre director John DeJung told Channel3000.com. “Even though we don't think that's the cause of any of our problems, we're shutting it down out of an abundance of caution. To make sure that's eliminated as a potential cause."

Mobile comms when you can't get a signal. A device called goTenna is being marketed in the US. The unit connects to your mobile phone and transmits to other goTenna-equipped phones via VHF when the mobile network is down.

TETRA system to go live after 4-year delay. Police in the Indian state of Gujarat are about to start trialling a new TETRA system, joining several other cities that have made the switch from analog.

US Air Force wants you … to help tell it how to come up with better protocols to improve the ability of the Common Data Link to meet future video and imagery demands. CDL operates at data rates as fast as 274 megabits per second in full-duplex data exchange at frequencies between 12 and 18 GHz.

Boeing, Blackberry combine for kamikaze smartphone. Boeing is enlisting the aid of Blackberry to improve its tamper-evident and self-destructing Boeing Black smartphone. Boeing hopes to make use of Blackberry's BES 12 Enterprise Service software.

But if you don't like a black phone … how about a gold one? UK firm Goldgenie will gladly sell you a gold-plated platinum Blackberry Passport for only £623.75. But wait - there's more! It comes in a cherry oak-finish box. I'll have two, thanks