Grant County, Wisconsin, awarded Federal Engineering a contract to evaluate the county’s existing conventional simulcast VHF system and make recommendations for modification, expansion and possibly replacement of the radio infrastructure.

The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) updated its report, “Best Practices for Public Safety Interoperable Communications.”

The state of Virginia 9-1-1 Services Board approved the AT&T Emergency Services IP network (ESInet) as the recommended platform to provide next-generation 9-1-1 (NG 9-1-1) communications statewide.

The FCC seeks comment on two issues surrounding 9-1-1 service. First, the commission wants comment on its rules regarding the reliability of the nation’s 9-1-1 networks, including notification to public-safety answering points (PSAPs) of network outages affecting 9-1-1 service.

The North Carolina general assembly’s program evaluation division (PED) released a report that found the state’s 800 MHz mission-critical communications network and the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) services are complementary but do not duplicate functionality.

The city of Portsmouth, Virginia, will deploy a Motorola Solutions Project 25 (P25) network to provide communications technology and interoperable coverage to its first responders. The multimillion-dollar contract will modernize the city’s emergency communications platform and integrate with its about 1,000 P25 APX radios already deployed.

With the buildout of the nationwide public-safety broadband network (NPSBN) underway, First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) Chair Sue Swenson cautioned public safety against becoming complacent during a keynote speech at the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) Public Safety Broadband Stakeholder Meeting in San Diego this week.

The Australian Volunteer Coast Guard deployed an Omnitronics digital radio dispatch system to help manage the mission-critical rescue communications across 2,512 kilometers of Australian coastline. The system helps increase the agency’s reach to remote locations for reliability, productivity, access and ease of communications for its 2,500 volunteers.

The FCC proposed a $2.8 million fine against HobbyKing for marketing 65 models of devices used to relay video from drones to amateur drone operators, which could apparently transmit in unauthorized RF bands, including some that could also operate at excessive transmission power levels.

Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications Systems (LA-RICS) is planning Long Term Evolution (LTE) round two with the primary objective of site augmentation of the round one system. The new round two sites will be selected in collaboration with AT&T.