Day 3 of IWCE 2023 features the opening of the Expo Hall
A small crowd gathered around a four-legged robot that shifted with lifelike movements, running forward onto the show floor of the 2023 IWCE exposition in Las Vegas, Nev.
“It’s meant for public safety and inspection of infrastructure,” said Charlie Robb, chief revenue officer for Common Objects, which had outfitted the Boston Dynamics robot, Spot, with sensors to detect natural gas. The data can be distributed to first responders via technology developed alongside Airbus.
“Our robot can collect a wide swath of data,” he continued, noting its capability to be equipped with thermal cameras and sensors able to detect chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear substances.
Across the way, another robot from Ghost Robots was equipped with an LTE modem from Verizon Frontline, the primary sponsor of the 47th annual telecommunications expo. Throughout the Las Vegas Convention Center’s North Hall, more than 5,000 registrants hailing from public safety-related organizations and technology businesses browsed more than 300 vender booths.
“We have a real niche market,” said Kevin Garmong, vice president of Pepro, which manufactures hardened enclosures designed to protect delicate telecommunications infrastructure. He was standing alongside the company’s Faraday Cage, a mobile box that can withstand lightning strikes, electromagnetic pulses and various types of interference.
“They can be towed up into the mountains or wherever they’re needed, or flown in,” Garmong said. Given the prevalence of wildfire and other incidents that require deployed telecommunications solutions into remote locations, the bulk of their clients are based in the West, Garmong said. Pepro, which was founded 28 years ago, is based in Oil City, Pa.
The annual exposition provides the business with an opportunity to connect with clients representing regional public safety agencies in the West that could put their enclosures to good use.
“We get a lot of people checking out new products,” said Garmong, noting they’ve attended off and on for two decades. “It’s a great show for us.”
Not far away, Octavio Cadena, a business development representative from the California-based antenna and communications equipment provider Cobham SATCOM, said the expo’s focus on radio waves, and the opportunity to interface with those in the industry, is what brings them out.
Cadena’s booth was showcasing a few shoebox-sized mobile gateways that serve as in-betweens, connecting satellites with legacy handheld devices. They can also become mobile WiFi hotspots and repeat signals locally.
“You don’t have to learn more. Keep using what you have,” he said. Earlier in the exposition, which kicked off Monday and ran through Thursday, Cobham was one of 275 speakers, sitting on a panel about broadband connectivity via satellites.
Other session topics ranged from fiber optics, interoperability, drones and robots, to push-to-talk, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and the need for in-building wireless connectivity, among many other things. Daily keynote addresses featured conversations with David Michael, who is organizing the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic and Paralympic Games, Billy Bob Brown Jr. of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Winston Beauchamp, deputy chief information officer for the U.S. Department of the Air Force, among other notable industry experts.
A common focus throughout was the rapid advancements of telecommunication technologies like low-orbit satellites that can connect first responders working in remote areas, or those without communication infrastructure, with critical resources.
“We’re looking at where is the fire service going to be in ten years,” said Dan Munsey, fire chief and warden at the San Bernardino County (Calif.) Fire Department during Wednesday’s keynote address. “The fire service is changing from responding to these fires, to trying to prevent them.”
That sentiment was shared by exhibiters on the show floor. Josh Lober, president and CEO of ESChat, a push-to-talk software company that can connect disparate communication systems on a common platform, said his business started in 2002, when flip-phones were commonplace. ESChat’s booth featured collaborative software demonstrations with wearables by Tait, a Zetron console and an Exacom monitor.
“We also interface with that Mindshow console right there—they have a booth right down there,” he said, gesturing to another area of the exposition floor.
In the last two decades, the many advances in technology “have improved performance, reliability, security, and latency,” he said. In a relatively short amount of time, “We’ve gone from 2G to 5G.”
And looking ahead, as telecommunication technology continues to evolve at a breathtaking pace, he expects cybersecurity to be “a top concern.”
Next year’s IWCE Expo will be held at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla., from March 25 to March 28, 2024. For more information, visit IWCEexpo.com.
