News Packets

An NTIA assessment and legislative proposal released July 22 offer 90 MHz of radio spectrum for 3G cellular, with FCC auction money to be set aside to fund the relocation of federal users — instead of going to the U.S. Treasury where it would be subject to congressional appropriation.

Chief Stan Clouser of Alpha Fire Company in State College, Penn., told a reporter for centredaily.com that interference from cellular towers operated by Nextel Partners “is gradually getting worse,” and Dan Tancibok, director of public safety for the county said, “It’s just so doggone complicated.”

Director Jeff Dillon of Monroe County, W.Va.’s 9-1-1 center took criticism from all sides, including police, fire and paramedic departments and the center’s advisory committee in a Register Herald (Beckley, W.Va.) news story that reported dissatisfaction with the center’s financial management, dispatcher training and radio system, though the county commission’s president, Craig Mohler, said: “I think Jeff has done a great job.”

The Evening News in Norwich, Norfolk, United Kingdom, reported that provincial police would introduce new TETRA handsets despite reports that as many as 200 police officers elsewhere in the country have claimed health problems stemming from radiation from the handsets.

The Western Australian Police Services, Perth, will abandon its under-construction digital radio system and continue to use its analog system in the face of what a West Australian news story described as “insurmountable problems trying to make the network communicate with other high-tech components built as part of the police service communications overhaul.” The Printrak Division of Motorola has a separate $22 million contract with WAPS for CAD construction and maintenance.

The Oakland County (Mich.) Law Enforcement Consortium has signed a $32 million contract with M/A-Com Wireless Systems for an OpenSky digital radio system to serve 80 law enforcement agencies in the county and southeast Michigan.

The American Radio Relay League, Newington, Conn., will receive a federal homeland security grant of $181,900 to train amateur radio operators in emergency communications. The grant is to come from a $10.3 million fund designated to boost homeland defense volunteer programs.

The FCC has adopted a Fifth Report and Order that sets forth a uniform migration path for General Use and State License public safety channels that will promote the deployment of spectrally efficient equipment in the 764-776 MHz and 794-806 MHz band (700 MHz band).

Firefighters in Independence, Mo., had to be stationed at strategic points to relay messages from an underground warehouse and office space when a commercial press machine in the Space Center Distribution complex caught fire, and the fire department’s radio system could not penetrate the structure, according to a news story in the Independence Examiner.