Schaumburg in Cook County, Illinois, awarded Federal Engineering a contract to provide consulting services to assist in the creation of a public safety real-time Information Center (RIC), which is a collaborative project between Schaumburg’s public-safety and IT departments.

The FCC approved a request from CommScope for a waiver of the commission’s labeling requirements for signal boosters. Specifically, the waiver will allow CommScope to use a single label to designate its PSR 700/800 signal booster as a class A and class B industrial signal booster.

The FCC denied a request from the city of Irvine, California, to allow participating commercial mobile service (CMS) providers to participate in an end-to-end Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) test on Oct. 15.

The National Emergency Number Association (NENA) released a guidance document on considerations and best practices for monitoring and managing next-generation 9-1-1 services and infrastructure.

An inquiry on the 2019-2020 bushfire season in New South Wales recommended that Australia’s government allocate 10 + 10 megahertz of dedicated spectrum for public-safety mobile broadband (PSMB) at no cost to the states or territories.

The Enterprise Wireless Alliance (EWA) announced the lineup of keynote speakers for its 2020 Wireless Leadership Summit. The summit will be held virtually, October 13 – 15.

PowerTrunk, the U.S.-based subsidiary of Teltronic, deployed a TETRA critical communications solution to the island of Bermuda to support all public-safety organizations on the island. Working with delivery partner Electronic Communications and in close cooperation with manufacturing partners Sepura and Teltronic, PowerTrunk deployed the solution early in 2020. Police, fire and ambulance services will all be connected to the new network, as well as other emergency responders, including the Royal Regiment.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai sent letters to CTIA, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and Qualcomm to assist in Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) geotargeting efforts.

In addition to radios and cellphones, first responders must carry myriad sensors and peripheral devices that can require different power sources and may need to be charged at different intervals. To address this challenge, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) awarded $1 million to Colorado-based small business TDA Research to develop a power module that would service all of the current and emerging requirements of on-body devices for first responders through the DHS Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program, administered by S&T.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) division announced the NIST Public Safety Innovation Accelerator Program Augmented Reality (PSIAP-AR) competition.