I spent some time in Motorola’s booth this week during the International Association of Chiefs of Police annual conference in San Diego. I was most interested in the company’s demonstration of wireless broadband applications for public safety over a 700 MHz, Long Term Evolution-based system. The demo was impressive—and I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Harlin McEwen, chairman of the Public Safety Spectrum Trust, which holds the license for the airwaves that would be paired with commercial spectrum to form the spectral foundation for a nationwide wireless broadband network for first responders, also came away impressed. (This will become more relevant should a miracle occur and Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility, which both have chosen LTE for their 4G migrations, decide to bid on the commercial spectrum when it is re-auctioned next year.)
I also took in a demo of Motorola’s APX multiband radio. The noise suppression capability was impressive. I immediately thought about the problem firefighters are having with because the vocoder used in most of them are unable to distinguish between voice and background noise in very loud environments. I asked Motorola spokesman Steve Gorecki whether the noise suppression technology engineered into the APX might be the answer to the fireground problems. He told me that the technology was developed well before the fireground problem jumped onto the radar screen, so it’s way too early to tell whether it could be adapted to solve the fireground problem, which he said is a complicated, industry-wide challenge. That said, Motorola demonstrated the technology at APCO’s conference in August using a fireground simulation and it performed well. Yes, real life is very different from a simulation. But, it seems as if Motorola might have a leg up on figuring this out.
A lot of readers worry about how to fund new communication systems or pay for large-scale educational programs to prepare communities for the security challenges of the modern age. They may be in luck, as additional guidance about federal funding has been released by the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA released fiscal year 2009 application guidance for 14 federal grant programs.
The grant programs offer more than $3 billion of available federal funding to assist state and local governments in strengthening community preparedness. The $3 billion is allocated to several specific programs and are awarded according to a risk-assessment methodology that assesses threat, vulnerability and consequence, according to DHS. The FY 2009 risk methodology has not changed from FY 2008.
M/A-COM is the name still used by the state of New York, but the company has been transitioning to the Tyco Electronics Wireless Systems name for months. In fact, at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) show in August, the word M/A-COM was nowhere to be found around the company’s booth.
The reason for the name change is that the M/A-COM name was sold by Tyco Electronics as part of the $425 million deal with Cobham for “old M/A-COM”—the RF components and microwave subsystems portion of the company. That portion of the company includes a lot of aerospace and defense work, including the design and manufacturing of an affordable cognitive radio for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
While the name M/A-COM will live on with the Cobham-owned entity (the sale closed a little more than a month ago), the rest of the business will continue operating under the Tyco Electronics name. For the moment, we at Urgent Communications are referencing the company as Tyco Electronics M/A-COM to help ensure that readers know which company we’re talking about during this transitional phase.
At some point, we’ll use the Tyco Electronics name exclusively, perhaps with a “formerly known as M/A-COM” reference on occasion (much like a magazine that happens to employ me). Eventually, officials for the vendor say they want the company to be known as TE Wireless Systems, but we probably need to get readers accustomed to the Tyco Electronics moniker before shortening it.
Last week I received a check from my bank, a refund from the escrow account from which the bank pays my property taxes. It was a significant amount of money—at least in the eyes of a journalist (There’s a very good reason my profession is referred to as the Fourth Estate). At first I was excited—I’ve had some medical issues this year, so a few bills are going to get paid earlier, which will get my doctors excited. The bank wasn’t sure why the surplus existed—it could have been that the taxes were over-estimated when I bought the house last year. Or it could be that the taxes have dropped, perhaps because the value of my property has dropped.
I thought about the latter possibility. If my taxes have dropped because my property value has diminished, presumably as a result of the lending fiasco, then others—perhaps thousands of others—are in the same boat. Also, consumers are tightening the belt, spending less in stores, restaurants, entertainment venues and the like. That means less sales tax revenue. None of this bodes well for first-responder communications, which is largely dependent on funding generated from tax dollars.
I’ve never understood why people make such a fuss about birthdays. The first one, well, I can see why people get excited about that—the day one comes out of the womb definitely is worth noting. After that, not so much. To me, it’s just another day on the calendar. That said, I do think that birthdays take on significant meaning when they pile up to the point where you begin to think of them in terms of decades. A good example of what I’m talking about is EFJohnson Technologies, which last week commemorated its 85th anniversary. Now, I can’t speak to the quality of the company’s products, as I don’t use portable or mobile radios in my line of work. But I do know that surviving for more than eight decades in a marketplace dominated by a behemoth is a significant achievement. Curious as to how EFJ has done so, I spoke last week with Max Safavi, the company’s chief operating officer, and Ed Kelly, vice president of marketing. I’ll share what they told me in tomorrow’s edition of the Urgent Communications Today e-newsletter. … A shout out to attorney Robert Schwaninger, who has authored an illustrated humor book, “A Married Man’s Guide to Christmas,” the Radio Club of America reported in its November newsletter. Schwaninger wrote the book, which is available through Amazon.com, under the nom de plume “Robert Henry.” … Speaking of the RCA, its annual banquet, which features keynote speaker Paul Jacobs, the CEO of Qualcomm, will be held Nov. 21 at the New York Athletic Club in NYC. Jacobs will receive the prestigious Sarnoff Citation—as will Brian Williams of the NBC Nightly News—which is awarded in recognition of contributions to the advancement of electronic communications. Tickets to the awards banquet are available until November 14. Contact Karen Clark at 303-948-4921.
