TESSCO Technologies secured the entire first year production capacity for CommScope’s new public-safety product, a bidirectional amplifier (BDA).

CentralSquare partnered with Genetec, a provider of video surveillance software. Combining the two companies’ technologies will enable public-safety agencies across North America to use existing public and private video cameras to reduce the number of victims of crimes and disaster while ensuring the safety of police officers and first responders, the companies said.

Airbus announced its participation in a Finnish governmental-funded pioneer research program called Priority, launched in August. The two-year program aims to find answers to research questions in the fields of 5G security, artificial intelligence (AI), rural area coverage and quality of service in hybrid networks, improving critical communications and situational awareness for public-safety users.

T-Mobile launched broadband push-to-talk (PTT) service from ESChat on its network. T-Mobile is offering ESChat to its business and government customers without interoperability restrictions, meaning customers purchasing PTT service via T-Mobile can communicate with ESChat users on any other wireless network.

The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) and a team of subject matter experts developed a protocol for testing the performance of commercial networks and the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) network.

Interoperability was the theme at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) International Emerging Technology Forum in Westminster, Colorado, Oct. 8 – 9. However, APCO officials said interoperability should be achieved with requests for proposals (RFPs) that primarily establish objectives rather than requiring standards.

A 9-1-1 location service is now available in 11 states, and a nationwide carrier plans to begin offering the service, delivering emergency location and expediting incident resolution for millions of 9-1-1 calls.

Barrett Communications supplied a contract to the Urgent Medical Attention Service in Chile to strengthen and secure communications between hospitals and ambulances in the Aysen region.

Verizon now offers the Sonim Technologies XP3 rugged flip phone preloaded with Verizon’s Push-to-Talk (PTT+) application on its network.

Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) announced a new funding opportunity, the NIST Public Safety Innovation Accelerator Program (PSIAP) First Responder 3D Indoor Tracking (FR3D) Prize. The competition aims to achieve performance of sensors and systems for localization and tracking of first responders operating indoors in a variety of building environments without pre-deployed dedicated infrastructure.