Friday fragments — critical comms snippets for 12 June 2015

A round-up of the week's critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 12 June 2015.

Norway military expands satcoms. Airbus Defence and Space has signed a four-year framework agreement with the Norwegian Defence Logistic Organisation (NDLO) for the provision of X-band satellite capacity and has committed to deliver up to 30 MHz of capacity annually on the Skynet military satellite constellation. Skynet will augment the Norwegian forces’ existing secure communications in maritime, land and aeronautical applications across Northern Europe and the Arctic, and for allied nations missions globally.

LTE growing and shrinking. Research released by Ovum shows that there were almost 635 million 4G LTE connections worldwide as of the first quarter of 2015, which is a 151% increase over the same time a year ago. Ovum forecasts that the global market will reach 1 billion connections in 2016 and 2.5 billion by the end of 2019. Meanwhile, other research from IHS Infonetics suggests that carrier spending on LTE networks is about to peak, at roughly US$23.5 billion, but will then begin to decline.

Airport antennas. Dali Wireless has been selected by Dallas Fort Worth Airport to provide in-building public safety coverage for first responders to handle mission-critical communications. The project, covering all five terminals of the airport, is part of the Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) Airport’s Critical Communications Infrastructure to support public safety and homeland security. Dali Wireless was chosen to design and install an all-digital distributed antenna system (DAS) to provide coverage and access throughout the DFW terminals for public safety, over an area of over 1.1 million square metres.

80% of mobile data. A report from Research and Markets suggests that “small cell, carrier WiFi, C-RAN and DAS networks [will] account for over 80% of all mobile data traffic by the end of 2020, while overall spending on HetNet infrastructure is expected to reach $40 billion annually during the same period”.

Europe’s 700 MHz plan. The European Commission has published the results of a public consultation on the September 2014 Lamy report concerning the UHF band. The results suggest that an EU coordinated approach, a common roadmap and a cost-efficient transition are needed for a successful release of the 700 MHz band in the EU