Friday fragments — critical comms snippets for 5 February 2016

Friday Fragments is back for 2016, with lots of news from the business- and mission-critical communications world.

Comms Connect events in 2016. There’s a full program of Comms Connect events coming up in 2016, including the new conference and exhibition in Wellington, New Zealand (14–15 April), to be hosted in collaboration with the Radio Frequency Users Association of New Zealand. There’ll also be the Sydney event in June, as well as the main Melbourne event in December. As, well, there will be one-day events in Perth (8 March), Adelaide and Brisbane — a preliminary program for Perth has just been released. And as far as the Sydney event is concerned, please take note that the call-for-papers deadline is 26 February (not 2 February, as it was accidently identified in last week’s Critical Comms e-newsletter). So if you are thinking of presenting at Sydney, now’s the time to get cracking and get in touch with the organisers.

Satellite essentials. If you’re in the satcoms business, you might like to consider fronting up to the Comms Essentials seminar in Sydney on 18 February. Run by the Communications Alliance, the event will “focus on current developments in the global and regional satellite sector — a dynamic communications vertical that is exploring new ground via large, high-throughput satellites, while also pursuing new coverage areas via micro-satellites and pushing satellite boundaries for the Internet of Things”.

Which radio network wants to be a millionaire? The city of Strongsville in Ohio has become the beneficiary of a donation of US$1.3 million of emergency radios from telco Sprint Nextel. The FCC had mistakenly given the company the go-ahead to use spectrum reserved for public safety. As part of a deal to fix the problem, the FCC gave the company several billion dollars in credits to retune the city’s radio system to new frequencies. But the gear was so old that it couldn’t be retuned, so Sprint decided to supply new Motorola equipment instead.

Secret squirrel comms. A report by the Office of the Inspector General of the US Department of Homeland Defense has highlighted the need to replace the Secret Service’s radio system. The report says: “Secret Service needs to upgrade the radio systems used around the White House complex, the Vice President’s Residence, and Foreign Diplomatic Embassies. Secret Service records show that, on average, the radios and associated infrastructure are between [redacted] years old and may not be working as effectively as needed. If Secret Service continues to use these outdated radiocommunications systems, it may negatively impact their protective operations.”

Codan expands in Dubai. Codan Radio Communications has expanded its sales and customer service team at its Dubai office, by adding regional sales managers and field support personnel to better service its Africa, Middle East and Central Asia customer base. “Our Dubai office is geographically located in the best position to provide customer service in these regions. It has the right time zone and direct travel routes to ensure we are best able to respond to customers and provide the highest level of service and support,” said Paul Sangster, VP of sales and business development.

Uninterruptible radar? US military research body DARPA said it has developed “an exceptionally high-speed analog-to-digital converter (ADC) [that] could help ensure the uninterrupted operation of spectrum-dependent military capabilities, including communications and radar, in contested EM environments”. It said that today’s ADCs “only process data within a limited portion of the spectrum at a given time. As a result, they can temporarily overlook critical information about radar, jamming, communications, and other potentially problematic EM signals.” The new high-speed technology “can analyse data from across a much wider spectrum range, allowing DoD systems to better operate in congested spectrum bands and to more rapidly react to spectrum-based threats”.

Radio not used during emergency. An emergency radio installed at a beach at Bombo (near Wollongong) during the summer season went unused by members of the public who came to the assistance of an ill young woman. Kiama Municipal Council lifeguard supervisor Andy Mole told the Illawarra Mercury: “We would like people to be aware the radio is there for them to use, should they see anyone in difficulty. When it is activated we can be at South Bombo in one-and-a-half minutes.”