The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) governing board approved the publication of the Radio Interoperability Best Practices Working Group’s latest report, “Best Practice #6, Channel Assignment Based on Infrastructure Coverage.”

The second state with an early builder network and the first U.S. territory accepted the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) and AT&T public-safety broadband plans for their areas.

Standards for mission-critical features within Long Term Evolution (LTE) continue to move forward with the partial completion of Release 14 in June and the addition of work on an LMR-to-LTE interworking standard in Release 15.

The states of Oklahoma and Missouri released requests for proposals (RFPs) for statewide public-safety broadband radio access networks (RANs) to compare to their First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) state plans.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced that the state will opt in to the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet). West Virginia is the seventh state in the country to opt in to the FirstNet state plan.

Gov. Chris Christie opted in to the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet). A statement said FirstNet and AT&T will deliver a specialized wireless broadband network to New Jersey’s public-safety community, although details about the state’s early builder project integration are scarce.

Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) said they have developed a new network protocol that simplifies the networking process and makes data transfer during emergencies more efficient.

Verizon Wireless asked the FCC to clarify whether a state may deploy a separate network core from the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) if it chooses to opt out of the FirstNet and AT&T state plan.

The board of governors of the Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation awarded funding to three homeland security projects between U.S. and Israeli companies to advance technologies for first responders. In addition to the grants from BIRD, the projects will access private sector funding, boosting the total value of the three projects to about $7 million.

Real-world tests of 5G technologies that could deliver dramatically faster data transfer speeds than 4G networks took place in Warsaw, Poland, earlier this month.