Friday fragments — critical comms snippets for 7 August 2015

A round-up of the week's critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 7 August 2015.

Blackberry buys AtHoc. Blackberry has announced its acquisition of AtHoc, a company that produces networked crisis communications software. AtHoc’s platform sends alerts to a variety of devices — including iOS, Android, PC and Mac desktops, digital displays, radios, IP phones, and endpoints such as sirens, fire panels and speakers.

FCC boss eyes 600 MHz for 5G. In his blog, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler writes that “as an implementation of existing flexible rules, I foresee lower-frequency bands playing a role in 5G. For example, the timing of the incentive auction makes the 600 MHz band a prime candidate for deployment of a wide-area 5G coverage layer. In much the same way that 700 MHz paved the way for America’s world-leading deployment of 4G, so could 600 MHz accelerate US deployment of 5G.”

Chicago tests LTE real-time video. The city of Chicago is piloting a system to transmit video and data over an LTE broadband network. Fifteen mobile police units have been fitted with terminals to receive the data, which will come from crime mapping, records management and sensor-based systems, such as automatic gunshot detectors, as well as the city’s 25,000 surveillance cameras.

Elbit wins US$45m comms contract. Israeli defence company Elbit has won a US$45m contract with an undisclosed European country for the supply of military communications systems, including equipment from the CNR-9000 and HF-6000 product families. The gear “will be provided to a wide range of users, from the individual soldier to the division level, in dismounted and mounted configurations, for both medium and long-range distances”.

First US county to get wireless broadband. Harris County in Texas looks set to become the first in the country to go live with a wireless broadband network as part of FirstNet. “The LTE system will greatly enhance the way we do things. We will operate in a more time-efficient and safer manner than we’ve done before,” Rodney Reed, deputy chief of planning for the Harris County Fire Marshal, told the Houston Chronicle. “Where the technology goes from here, the sky is going to be the limit.”

Kore teams with Fargo. KORE is partnering with Fargo Telecom to deliver extended service offerings to the Asian market. Fargo Telecom offers the manufacture and sale of GPS receivers, wireless modems and multimode gateways, as well as the custom design and development of devices, backend software and distribution of cellular, RF and Wi-Fi modules.

SK Telecom to test LTE-M for maritime market. SK Telecom has announced plans to launch the world’s first pilot LTE-M (LTE for Maritime Wireless Communications) network, as part of a research and development project led by the Korean Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries (MOF). LTE-M supports high-speed wireless telecommunications on ships located approximately 100 kilometres from shore. LTE-M is expected to significantly enhance navigation safety of small ships that have relatively poor in-built communications and safety systems.

AT&T to require FM chips in phones. Beginning next year, telco AT&T will require mobile phone makers to include technology that will enable users to receive FM radio broadcast transmissions in times of emergency.

FBI radio procurement challenged. A US politician has called on the FBI’s director to take a second look at the agency’s trouble-plagued effort to acquire a new radio system. Anna Eshoo said the RFT is biased towards Motorola. “Simply put, the terms of the FBI’s bid solicitation for dual-band radios are inconsistent with the vision of Congress,” she said in her letter to the FBI. The procurement process is currently under a cloud, following a challenge by Harris Corp.

Public safety LTE market to boom. ABI Research has released figures that suggest the total number of public safety LTE user subscriptions to reach 11 million worldwide by 2020, with a market size of US$5.1 billion.