In comments on the FCC’s decision to allow commercial use in the 4.9 GHz band, public-safety entities continued to oppose the decision and push the FCC to vacate, while other industry organizations showed support for the effort but said strong FCC oversight is needed for the new rules to succeed.

Comtech Telecommunications announced that during its second quarter of fiscal 2021, Comtech Solacom Technologies, a division of Comtech’s Commercial Solutions segment received a next-generation 9-1-1 (NG 9-1-1) services contract to provide its Guardian call-handling solution to the Toronto Police Service, supporting the largest 9-1-1 center in Canada and one of the largest cities in North America.

The National Public-Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) submitted a petition for reconsideration of the FCC’s new 4.9 GHz rules.

The Arlington County (Virginia) Emergency Communications Center (ECC) became one of the first centers in the nation to implement capabilities that allow fire and EMS dispatchers and supervisors to deliver critical emergency communications services no matter where they are.

An outage on a communication provider’s network caused some disruptions to 9-1-1 services in eight Minnesota Counties January 11.

Everbridge announced that its mass notification system will be used to help keep Washington, D.C., residents and visitors safe and informed in the days leading up to and during the presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C. on January 20.

French radio communications specialist ETELM was recognized for its work to help establish a COVID-19 mobile medical facility in Italy. The project, which was a deployment of a mobile laboratory called the Biological Light Field Laboratory for Emergencies (B-LiFE), won at the International Critical Communications Awards 2020 in the category of “Best use of critical communications in public safety.”

Teltronic together with its local partner, Forte Comunicaciones, was selected by various municipalities in the Mexican state of Nuevo León to deploy critical communications networks based on TETRA technology.

The city of Longueuil in Quebec, Canada, chose the Omnitronics omnicore radio dispatch system to connect buses en route with operators at the city’s central command and communications center. The system is earmarked for installation and commissioning in 2021.

The CBRS Alliance, an industry organization focused on driving the development, commercialization and adoption of OnGo shared spectrum solutions, announced it is expanding its mission to encompass Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) technologies operating in shared spectrum bands around the globe, leveraging its members’ successes in commercializing the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band in the United States. To align with this broader objective, the organization is changing its name to the OnGo Alliance.