Friday fragments — critical comms snippets for 19 February

A round-up of the week's critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 19 February 2016.

NZ radio tower demolished. A 220-metre-tall Radio New Zealand mast, which had been the second-tallest structure in the country, has been felled with explosives. Watch the video here.

Military manpack vendors. Technavio has released a research report covering the military manpack and vehicular radio market. It said Exelis and Harris are the top two, with other leaders being Finmeccanica, Radmor, Thales and Australia’s own Barrett Communications.

Ship carrying comms, stopped. Saudi Arabia diverted and detained a small cargo vessel, the MV Mainport Cedar, bound for Yemen, on the basis that it was suspected of carrying communications and other gear intended for rebel forces. But it turns out the comms were the property of the UN, and it was just the paperwork that was not in order.

20 MHz blocks, please. The Cellular Operators’ Association of India has asked the country’s Department of Telecommunications to set a minimum 20 MHz block size for forthcoming auctions of 2300 and 2500 MHz.

AT&T testing 5G. AT&T has said that it plans to “collaborate with Ericsson and Intel to work on 5G solutions in our labs starting in the second quarter of this year, with outdoor tests and trials over the [northern] summer… We expect 5G to deliver speeds 10–100 times faster than today’s average 4G LTE connections.” It said that “millimetre waves, network function virtualisation (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) will be among the key ingredients for future 5G experiences”.

Calls centres to consolidate. A new law in the US state of Illinois requires the number of 911 public safety access points (PSAPs) in some counties to be cut, while other counties will get new PSAPs.

Tower climber safety workshop. The US FCC recently held a workshop covering OHS issues for tower climbers. You can watch a video of the workshop here.

US and Mexico talk border spectrum. The US FCC and Mexico’s Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones recently held a spectrum coordination meeting. The outcomes include a commitment to complete work on an agreement to facilitate implementation of Positive Train Control technology in the border area, agreement on a roadmap to facilitate rebanding the 800 MHz band along the common border to reduce interference to US public safety licensees and development of work plans to address coordination in several other frequency bands.