Friday fragments - comms news from around the web for 4 July 2014

A round-up of the week's critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 4 July 2014.

APCO Australasia wants your input. APCOA is asking members of the emergency services and professional communications community to provide feedback on the topic of 'next-generation public safety'. There's an online questionnaire here.

Huawei wins rail contracts. Chinese comms giant Huawei has won contracts to provide eLTE systems to a light rail system in Ethiopia and a heavy rail coal line in China. For the latter, a “wireless broadband system was required to communicate between the master-slave locomotives located at both ends of trains, which could be up to 2.5 kilometres apart" said the company in a press release.

DARPA seeks jam-resistant comms. US government research agency DARPA is “soliciting innovative research proposals to explore the feasibility of a wideband spread-spectrum RF communications system with greater than 10 GHz of instantaneous bandwidth. The system will operate below 20 GHz to mitigate atmospheric absorption and employ coding gain and spectral filtering for resistance to jamming." Given that it's in the US, shouldn't that be jelloing, not jamming? (Sorry: Ed.)

Radio for Red Bull races. German comms company Riedel has supplied two TETRA base stations and hundreds of handhelds for use during Red Bull air races in various countries. The company also provided wireless video links and high-definition cameras for the aircrafts' cameras.

Commonwealth Games comms. Riedel will also supply communications for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow (23 July-3 August). The company will supply 14 venues with “all radio handsets and radio communication accessories - including more than 6000 radios - used in the lead-up to and during the Games, along with a terrestrial trunked radio (TETRA) digital network and a Motorola MOTOTRBO digital radio repeater system".

Vote on Russian tower's fate. We've reported before on the likely demise of Moscow's amazing Shukhov television tower. Old, rusting and in the way, authorities are wanting to pull it down. But Muscovites are being urged to have their voices heard by voting via a smartphone app on whether to restore the tower or move it somewhere else.

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