Friday fragments — critical comms snippets for 6 November 2015

A round-up of critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 6 November 2015.

DX expedition is island bound. The 2015 VK9WA Willis Island DXpedition is about to get underway. From 14 to 23 November, a team of intrepid amateur radio operators will board a boat and head for the island, 450 kilometres from the Queensland coast. The aim is to make contact with hams from all around the world, and build up a battery of QSLs. Willis Island is home to a permanent Bureau of Meteorology weather station crewed by four specialists.

DC chooses AtHoc for alerts. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has selected AtHoc, a division of BlackBerry, for its new highly secure alerting and crisis communication system. WMATA will use AtHoc Connect, AtHoc’s platform for secure interoperable crisis communication, to create a secure, unified crisis communication network that enables rapid communication between internal teams, first responders, local facilities and key decision-makers.

London cracks down on pirate radio. UK regulator Ofcom has just held a summit to discuss the problem of small, pirate radio stations in London. These installations not only pose a physical hazard to local residents, they’ll also cause harmful interference. Last year, the UK’s air traffic control service reported 55 cases of interference from pirate radio.

Finland, Russia reach agreement. Finland’s regulator, FICORA, and the Russian frequency management authority have concluded an agreement on using the 700 MHz frequency band in the border area for wireless broadband networks in Finland and for aeronautical radionavigation in Russia. Finland and Russia have been discussing the use of the 700 MHz frequency band in the border area of the two countries for several years.

Tower offload. Indonesian mobile telco PT XL Axiata reportedly wants to sell off a parcel of telecoms towers in a move estimated to fetch up to US$500 million. In 2014, the company sold 3500 towers in a $459 million deal.

DIY microwave broadband. Residents of an island off the coast of the US state of Washington, sick and tired of the level of service from their ISP, have spent $25,000 installing their own microwave link to the mainland. “It wasn’t that hard,” software engineer Chris Sutton told ArsTechnica.