Friday fragments - comms news from around the web 30 January 2015

A round-up of the week's critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 30 January 2015.

Smartphone becomes a two-way. We've seen these before, but the Beartooth device that attaches to the back of iPhones and Samsung Galaxy's will turn the smartphones into a two-way radio that can communicate with other Beartooth-equipped phones when beyond cell coverage.

Refinery leases part of emergency network. A local county and a refinery company have reached an agreement for the latter to use part of the county's 800 MHz comms system. The refinery will pay US$400 per radio per month for the access.

FirstNet trial to begin. PMC Associates, Oceus Networks and Fujitsu Network Communications have teamed up to build a proof-of-concept LTE network known as JerseyNet, using 700 MHz Band 14 FirstNet spectrum. To meet obligations, the system has to be operational by September this year.

FirstNet numbers. Speaking of FirstNet, here are some stats. It is estimated that there will be 5.4 million users across the USA, with coverage extending over almost 10 million square kilometres and encompassing 60,000 public safety agencies, 3250 counties and 566 tribes. Broken down into different user classes, there will be: law enforcement (30%), fire services (18%), medical services (17%), federal government (12%), state government (12%) and utilities (11%).

Navy testing LTE at sea. The US Navy has been testing LTE on vessels at sea, with the aim of sharing video and other data between ships. A trial 12 months ago found pluses and minuses, the latter including interference from other transmissions, and security issues.

Volunteer Coast Guard needs your help. The Australian Volunteer Coast Guard in Sandringham, Victoria, says it needs another 10 volunteer radio operators to help fill its roster.

HF licences granted for new tech testing. The FCC in the US has issued licences to two companies for testing of higher-than-normal HF bandwidth and data rate technologies. One of those companies, MITRE, said: “We are investigating the capability of higher bandwidth and higher data rate communications in the HF band applying polarisation diversity MIMO concepts," with the aim of providing data rates of between 1 and 4 bits/Hz/s. The other company, TrellisWare Technologies, will use its licence “to implement and field test the design of an advanced HF waveform"