Good education and training, meticulous equipment management and as much advanced planning as is practical are critical for public-safety agencies to effectively serve their communities during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, said fire officials whose agencies have been on the frontlines of the battle against the virus.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) canceled the Public Safety Stakeholder Meeting scheduled for June in San Diego, and the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) International pushed its Nexus event back a year.

JVCKENWOOD announced that its Kenwood TM-D710GA amateur radio equipment was selected for operational use on the International Space Station (ISS). The TM-D710GA is designed for use on the ISS and will be installed in the Columbus European laboratory sometime after the March 7 successful launch of SpaceX CRS-20 (Falcon 9 rocket).

Critical Communications World (CCW) 2020 has been postponed to 3 – 5 November in Madrid. The global conference was originally scheduled for 17 – 19 June in Madrid.

The International Wireless Communications Expo (IWCE) 2020 was rescheduled for Aug. 24 – 28 at the Las Vegas Convention Center (South Halls 1-2) in Las Vegas. ETA’s Education Forum is also rescheduled to take place at this time.

The 2020 Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) International Western Region Conference was canceled after Utah’s governor announced a restriction on public gatherings of more than 100 people. The event was scheduled April 6 – 9 in Ogden, Utah.

The International Wireless Communications Expo (IWCE), which was scheduled to take place March 30 – April 3 in Las Vegas, has been postponed due to concerns about the ongoing worldwide COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.

America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) submitted two reports on the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) to the FCC in an ex parte filing.

The DRIVER+ Advanced Crisis Management Conference was held in Brussels 18 – 20 February, bringing together more than 300 crisis management specialists, policy-makers, academics and technology developers from throughout Europe and beyond.

The First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) nationwide public-safety Long Term Evolution (LTE) network now covers more than 2.61 million square miles of the nation, said AT&T, the contractor deploying the network. More than 11,000 public-safety agencies and organizations subscribe to FirstNet, accounting for more than 1.2 million connections nationwide.