Friday fragments - comms news from around the web for 18 July 2014

A round-up of the week's critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 18 July 2014.

Don't miss ARCIA's Brisbane event. Don't forget that the third annual ARCIA Brisbane seminar day and dinner is coming up on 31 July. There will be feature presentations, information sessions, TETRA and P24 Solution Centre demos, and plenty of time for networking, especially at the dinner in the evening. Comms Connect is a supporter of this event.

Motorola opens Euro test lab. Motorola has opened the million-euro Mission Critical Solutions Centre at the company's European headquarters in the UK. The test lab and live demonstration facility “provides a test bed for combining voice and data into familiar mission-critical operations".

Victorian town gets upgraded safety comms. Firefighters in Mallacoota, Victoria, can now directly contact ESTA, thanks to the launch of a new $66million Regional Radio Dispatch Service (RRDS) in eastern Victoria.

Joint US/Australian spy comms base. The US Defence Information Systems Agency is spending US$9.6m on a new 'Teleport' facility at Geraldton in Western Australia to boost “real-time sideband satellite communications for military operations to all branches of the US armed services worldwide as well as Australian defence forces".

4G taking off in New Zealand. Consumers are increasingly taking up 4G services in New Zealand as carriers' networks expand. Vodafone says it has 400,000 active 4G users. Telecom New Zealand says over 60% of its customers use a smartphone, with data use growing by 52% in the past year.

Canada to auction AWS-3 spectrum. The Canadian government has announced that it will offer newer, smaller carriers a shot at high-throughput AWS-3 spectrum, by setting aside 30 MHz of the available 50 MHz.

Argentina's 700 MHz auction. The Argentinian telecom ministry, Secom, has set out the bidding conditions for the country's upcoming AWS (1.7-2.1 GHz) and 700 MHz spectrum, along with 3G spectrum in the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz bands.

Is that logical, captain? US communications company USA Mobility is changing its name to Spok - but it's pronounced 'spoke'. USA Mobility/Spok provides “solutions for workflow improvement, secure texting, paging services, call centre optimisation and public safety response".

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