Friday fragments - comms news from around the web for 17 October 2014

A round-up of the week's critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 17 October 2014.

California closer to text-to-911. The Californian governor, Edmund Brown, has signed Senate Bill 1211, which requires the Office of Emergency Services (OES) to “develop a plan and timeline for testing, implementing and operating a statewide Next Generation 911 emergency communication system, including text to 911 services. It requires OES to establish a transparent process for annually calculating the cost of implementing the Next Gen 911 plan when it sets the 911 fee and to make the information publicly available to the Legislature, the 911 Advisory Board and on the OES website no later than September 1st of each year," reports California Newswire. The bill will take effect on 1 January 2015.

UAE begins phase 2 of TETRA system. The United Arab Emirates' Ministry of Interior (MoI) has launched the second phase of a TETRA project for mobile communications in the Northern Emirates, which serves the police and leaders of the various sectors of the MoI.

Isle of Man upgrade plans. The Isle of Man wants to upgrade its TETRA system, which is 11 years old. The island - which, amongst other things, is famous for motorcycle races - has 3300 TETRA units which, since 2003, have handled 15 million calls.

Sino-Japanese hotline on the cards. Tokyo and Beijing have restarted talks on setting up a hotline between senior defence officials in an effort to prevent accidental military clashes. In addition to the hotline and regular meetings, the arrangement would also include establishing direct radio comms between the countries' warships and aircraft.

Germany joins Euro satellite scheme. Germany has joined a European Defence Agency (EDA) program to share and pool commercial satellite bandwidth for government and military use. The scheme “offers a 'pay per use' model, so Member States do not have to pay a regular fee and instead only pay for the services that they use", says EDA. Nine other countries are already involved.

Radio warns against attacks. An HF radio network in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Democratic Republic of Congo is being used to warn villagers of impending attacks by the so-called Lord's Resistance Army. The network has just been extended with the erection of a new tower in the CAR.

AA Radio launches online shop. Local firm AA Radio has launched a new online shop that lets customers upload radio programming details so that their units ship fully programmed and ready to go.

Did you miss any of these other Critical Comms news stories?

Radio Spectrum Management New Zealand monthly update

Motorola's 200,000th TETRA terminal in Germany

Airwave opens Middle East office in Dubai

Call for abstracts - ANZ Disaster and Emergency Management Conference

JVC Americas and Kenwood USA merge US operations

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