Backhaul, October 2014: the industry 25 and 10 years ago

25 YEARS AGO. The cover of the October/November 1989 issue of What's New in Radio Communications featured Softkey dispatch console systems from Uni-Lab Telecommunications. These systems had a colour VDU (or you could opt for an LED indicator configuration) and software that could be loaded via floppy disk or EPROMs.

This issue reported on a trunked LMR network for Australia's east coast, implemented by Australnet Ltd, complete with more than two dozen towers and frequencies in the 800 MHz and VHF bands; and a study by BIS Shrapnel that revealed pent-up demand for a second cellular network across the country, to compete with Telecom's Mobilenet.

For the tech heads, there was a long article explaining all the ins and outs of VSWR, and another on making network measurements using a 100 Hz-400 MHz spectrum analyser.

10 YEARS AGO. The cover of the September/October 2004 issue of Radio Comms Asia-Pacific featured the Simoco SRP9100 portable and SRM9000 mobile radios - with digital voice, GPS and AVL. And it's fitting that such units were displayed on the cover, because 10 years ago there was a lot of doom and gloom about the impending death of PMR and LMR. Other technologies such as GSM were snapping at the heels of traditional radio. In a guest editorial, Bob Selby-Wood concluded, “So in 2004 the two-way radio companies had better join the data/voice convergence revolution or pack their bags. There's not much time left."

The other big news 10 years ago seemed to be wireless, with reports on ever-shrinking technologies and on-chip antennas; 'smartphone' had entered the lexicon; and the then ACA was conducted a review of shortwave bands to see if more spectrum could be freed up.