Australian local governments and the early national broadband network roll-out: an online survey

A recent decision by the Australian Federal Government to reassess the scale of the National Broadband Network (NBN) will leave the country with a patchwork of different levels of access to the infrastructure. This intensifies the need to investigate and evaluate the implications of telecommunication at the local level. The paper opens a discussion on the different approaches taken by local government authorities towards the NBN in the early roll-out localities. Building upon the international literature, it analyses the empirical data collected from the Australian local governments involved with the early NBN roll-out using an online survey. The findings reveal an interesting diversity in the approaches taken at the local level, and show how decision-making at higher levels of government can impact local outcomes

APCO project 25 wireless data services over land mobile radio channel for smaller law enforcement agencies

Digital data messages are very important in modern communication systems and advanced mobile data technologies have opened the door to a wide range of applications and services in the public safety environment. Still, the availability of mobile data services among public safety agencies is hampered by two issues of the implementation of data communication: the reliability of commercial data services and the high cost of the equipment needed to support mixed voice and data transmissions over private land mobile radio channels. This thesis describes the design and development of an inexpensive Software Defined APCO Project 25 Data Base Station that allows smaller law enforcement agencies to enable data services in their cruisers in a cost effective way. The data base station is comprised of a standard PC interfaced to a commercial analog VHF FM transceiver via a commercial PC sound card. The base station is compliant with commercial P25 digital mobile radios and operates in parallel to commercial P25 digital voice communications equipment