Cover Story

A long time coming

By Donny Jackson (donald.jackson@penton.com)

After years of work, key pieces of next-generation 911 architecture are in place and some early systems are expected to be deployed this year. But several hurdles still stand in the way of widespread adoption....

Features

Keeping it fresh

By Merrill Douglas

New laws and regulations are putting increased pressure on food and pharmaceutical companies to ensure the integrity of their products....

Another way of thinking about digital

By David Kahn

Serial bridging could let first responders of the future carry commercial devices for normal operations....

Now you're done

By Ira Wiesenfeld, P.E., and Robert C. Shapiro, P.E.

Well, not really — once your LMR system is deployed and operating, steps must be taken to protect and maintain it....

First Word

The case against smartphones

By Glenn Bischoff (glenn.bischoff@penton.com)

Without a doubt, people become addicted to smartphones. But that’s not the worst of it; it has become clear to me that users just as quickly become slaves to these devices. ...

View from the Top

The road to everything

By John Vaughan

The public-safety communications industry must broaden its understanding of LTE to envision what this technology can do, both alone and in concert with traditional narrowband and emerging commercial solutions....

Final Word

Waste not, want not

By Alan Tilles

Errors can be significant and could result in a license not being renewed by the FCC or in an authorization that might cause or receive interference. ...

Dispatches

NENA’s i3 standard approval delay continues

By Donny Jackson (donald.jackson@penton.com)

Without more information, it’s difficult to assess the procedural complaints that have led to the i3 document’s approval being delayed. However, it is important that there is no doubt about the legitimacy of the i3 guidelines when they are adopted, so any due diligence that NENA can do upfront to ensure that happens should be welcomed by the industry....

Nvidia buy part of LTE market trend

By Lynnette Luna

With the acquisition, Nvidia aims to strengthen its mobile-device silicon business by integrating Icera's baseband/RF chipsets with its applications processors under a single platform. ...

Speakers: Utility sector's migration to IP is inevitable, so start preparing

By Glenn Bischoff (glenn.bischoff@penton.com)

Native IP offers much higher data speeds than either TDM or SONET networks, which will become even more important as utilities increasingly turn to video to secure critical infrastructure. ...

FCC proposes to extend outage reporting to broadband

By Donny Jackson (donald.jackson@penton.com)

FCC commissioners last week approved a notice of proposed rulemaking that calls for voice-over-IP (VoIP) providers to report outages of at least 30 minutes in an effort to make the nation’s 911 emergency-calling system more reliable....

Gear

Motorola headset computer gives workers voice-activated wireless access to data, video

By Glenn Bischoff

The "Golden-i" un-tethers field workers from the mobile data terminals or rugged laptop computers in their service or emergency vehicles. ...

AtHoc introduces new emergency-notification applications

By Donny Jackson (donald.jackson@penton.com)

Emergency-mass-notification vendor AtHoc recently announced new mobile applications for its IWSAlerts platform that are designed to leverage the capabilities of mobile broadband wireless networks and the functionality of smartphones and tablet devices....

SignalSet unveils M2M solution

By Lynnette Luna

Startup SignalSet has developed a machine-to-machine (M2M) solution that lets enterprises deploy and control wireless devices that are capable of remotely switching between GSM and CDMA networks in real time....