The FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Public Safety and Homeland Security bureaus will host a webinar Sept. 27 on disaster preparedness for local and state officials.

Tioga County, New York, selected Federal Engineering to provide technical assistance and develop recommendations to improve the county’s wireless public-safety infrastructure.

The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is seeking comment on the vertical accuracy (Z-axis) test bed report submitted by CTIA and a proposal for a Z-axis accuracy metric submitted with the report.

The Safer Buildings Coalition elected Patrick Lau, Comba Telecom vice president of strategic development, to its board of directors as vice president.

The FCC granted a limited waiver of its emergency alert system (EAS) and wireless emergency alert (WEA) rules to permit EAS participants and participating commercial mobile service (CMS) providers to participate in a test to be conducted by the Puerto Rico Emergency Management Bureau (PREMB). This test will be a combined live EAS and end-to-end WEA test, scheduled for Sept. 12, with a backup date of Sept. 13.

The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) International received a $30,000 grant from Motorola Solutions Foundation. The grant is administered through APCO’s Commercial Advisory Council (CAC) Scholarship Program, which makes scholarship funds available to public-safety communications professionals who participate in APCO Institute training and attend an APCO International event.

AT&T plans to introduce mobile 5G in parts of five additional cities — Houston; Jacksonville, Florida; Louisville, Kentucky; New Orleans; and San Antonio — this year. Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung are AT&T’s 5G suppliers.

CentralSquare Technologies — formed by the merger of Superion, TriTech Software Systems and Zuercher Technologies — launched as a provider of public sector software. The completed merger brings together the three companies with the public sector and healthcare business of Aptean.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), in collaboration with the U.S. Coast Guard Research and Development Center (RDC), launched the U.S. Coast Guard Ready for Rescue Challenge, a $255,000 prize competition that seeks boater safety solutions that will help make it easier to find people in the water.

Two groups filed conflicting comments in the FCC’s request for input on whether to initiate a rulemaking proceeding to revise its rules for wireless priority service (WPS).