Friday fragments — critical comms snippets for 28 August 2015

A round-up of the week's critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 28 August 2015.

UK trying to sort comms mess. The UK government has issued a Prior Information Notice “to notify the market that the Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme (ESMCP) plans to host supplier events and market sounding meetings to further develop its understanding of the market for the Emergency Services Network (ESN) — Extended Area Services… ESMCP is a cross-government, multi-agency programme led by the Home Office to deliver ESN. The ESN will deliver integrated national critical voice and broadband services to all three emergency services (3ES) and other users throughout Great Britain. We expect this to rely on commercial networks, enhanced to provide national coverage, resilience and security with public safety functionality.”

Motorola to buy Airwave UK? There are rumours circulating that Motorola Solutions is interested in buying Airwave UK, the current provider of emergency communications to public safety authorities. A figure of £1 billion has been suggested.

Could comms have saved Cecil? There was worldwide outrage over the recent killing of Cecil the lion. Those charged with tackling illegal hunting and poaching are faced with large areas to cover, and difficultly in communicating in remote regions. What kind of wireless comms could benefit them? Yossi Segal, co-founder and VP of Research and Development for Mobilicom, has written a blog post with some thoughts on the subject.

Satcom Direct to buy Airbus DS Satcom. US global aeronautical communications provider Satcom Direct Communications has entered into a purchase agreement to acquire Airbus DS SatCom Government, Inc. (ASGI), expanding its market presence and offerings to the US government sector.

BAE UK military training contract. BAE Systems, in partnership with Babcock, has won a contract to provide the training infrastructure, management, support, trainers and training development staff to continued training development and delivery of the Falcon military broadband voice and data communications system for the next four and a half years at training facilities within Britain.

DARPA wants to share. US military research agency DARPA “is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of spectrum sharing between radar and communications systems, following on prior work carried out in the coexistence thrust of Phase 1 of the Shared Spectrum Access for Radar and Communications (SSPARC) program”. The SSPARC program seeks to support two types of spectrum sharing: between military radars and military communications systems that increases both capabilities simultaneously when operating in congested and contested spectral environments; and “between military radars and commercial communications systems that preserves radar capability while meeting national and international needs for increased commercial communications spectrum, without incurring the high cost of relocating radars to new frequency bands”.