Friday fragments — critical comms snippets for 19 June 2015

A round-up of the week's critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 19 June 2015.

Airwave UK rumoured to be up for sale. Airwave, which runs the UK’s emergency services communications network and is owned by Australia’s Macquarie group, is rumoured to be for sale. Sky News has reported that the company is in discussions with leading communications providers, at a time when the final make-up of Britain’s future public safety radio network is looking increasingly uncertain.

Firstnet director testifies. Acting Executive Director of the US’s First Responder Network Authority TJ Kennedy has testified before the US House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, telling it that FirstNet has achieved its goals so far and setting out its plan for the years ahead… including building strong cybersecurity into the system. You can read the full written testimony here. FirstNet has also published answers to 95 questions solicited from the critical communications industry.

Qatar’s TETRA AVLS. Ooredoo Qatar is introducing an AVLS service for its TETRA customers. Ooredoo has been in operation in Qatar since April 2005 and currently has over 290 customers with 27,000-plus users.

Wi-Fi to boom. Wi-Fi networks will carry close to 60% of mobile data traffic by 2019, suggests a report from Juniper Research. “Mobile data offload [data migration from a mobile network to a Wi-Fi network] offers several key benefits to industry stakeholders. Offload not only addresses the issue of patchy coverage, but also has the potential for the creation of new services such as VoWiFi (Wi-Fi calling) and to increase the usage of existing 3G/4G services,” said Juniper Research.

Drones tipped for tower inspections. Small remote-controlled flying drones are being suggested as a safer alternative for inspecting radio towers, transmission lines and so on.

Inflatable antennas. US company GATR Technologies, which makes inflatable satellite antennas for the military, says its units can fit inside a backpack and withstand around 20 gunshots without deflating.

1000 radios left unused in boxes. A little over 1000 radios worth US$5 million and destined for use by the Mobile County Communications District sat unused in boxes for around two years. Although 500 of the radios have now been deployed, the four-year, US$40 million contract between the District, Harris Corp and its local contractor, Hurricane Electronics, is now the focus of an investigation over concerns about costs and inefficiencies. “I hope there’s been no wrongdoing, any deliberate wrongdoing,” Commissioner Noah Price ‘Trey’ Oliver said, told a recent District board meeting. “Let me assure you this does not pass the sniff test.”