For many of us when it comes to receiving information or news about a particular issue, it’s common to hear someone say something related to the phrase first used by King James I of England in 1616 when he said, “No news is better than evil news,” or as later modified “No news is good news.”

COVID-19 cases are surging as a result of the fast-spreading Delta variant. Slowing vaccination rates and large gatherings are also contributing to the strain’s rapid rise, threatening a return to normalcy. On top of that, guidance and recommendations are changing yet again, along with concerns about the rise of mental health issues, leaving people uncertain about what they should do to protect themselves and their loved ones.

T-Band has always been somewhat of a complicated spectrum resource in which to conduct frequency coordination. The band was made available about fifty years ago, before propagation prediction and other spectrum management tools were widely available as they are today. Consequently, the FCC adopted license assignment rules based on what they knew back in the early 1970s. Systems were analog, channels were 25 kHz wide, and deploying trunking technology was not yet a routine system decision. Protocols adopted by the FCC may have made sense 5o years ago, but not so much today.

The second quarterly Third Generational Partnership Project (3GPP) Plenary e-meetings of 2021 recently concluded. The group focused on the completion of Release 17 (R17) stage 2 (architecture) work and preparation for prioritization of features for R18. The group declared the stage 2 work frozen, while allowing some work items to continue into the third quarter of 2021. At this time, the R17 stage 3 (protocol) freeze date remains on schedule for March 2022.

It is, as we are all too aware, a strange time for everyone, so I am extremely proud of the way TCCA, our members and partners have continued to support the enhancement and development of critical communications. The progress of key projects has continued uninterrupted thanks to a smooth transition to online working.

Welcome to November 2020. The election is finally behind us, COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc in the United States, and the number of wildfires, major storms, and hurricanes continue to make our first responders’ work even more essential. When FirstNet was created in February of 2012, it was a result of the public-safety community having banded together across disciplines. The Public Safety Alliance (PSA) sought and received support from a variety of organizations including governors, mayors and most LMR venders.

Power and telecommunication codependency risks are nothing new. Yet in California, the landscape has evolved so as to make this an acute concern.

The FCC has permitted unlicensed devices to share the 6 GHz band with public-safety and critical infrastructure industries (CII) microwave systems. By permitting such sharing without first demonstrating that co-existence can work in the field, there is a dangerous risk with disastrous consequences.

The world around us — both globally and locally — changed dramatically a few months ago when the COVID-19 pandemic began to hit country after country. Many things have changed, among them numerous cancellations and job losses, but one positive is the continuing innovation in the mission-critical communications industry

Direct mode, also called device-to-device (D2D) communications — or more precisely, the lack of it — is seen to be one of the main risks in moving from narrowband professional mobile radio (PMR) technologies exclusively to broadband Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)-based solutions. However, at times, the root cause is lost in the discussion.