Crowded Airwaves: Air to ground communications: "Air to air communication is critical for safe aircraft operations. And, because of standards in training, equipment and frequency allocation, air to air communication is generally reliable. Air-to-ground communication, on the other hand, is not quite as reliable and can lead to serious problems during normal aircraft operations.

There are over 17,000 state and local law enforcement agencies in the United States. For very practical reasons, each agency has its own radio frequency or frequencies. Moreover, each state and local agency is influenced by a political parent organization, such as a municipal police force, and is ultimately managed by a city. When making budgetary choices, organizations spend money for public safety-related technologies at vastly different rates. The combination of local choices and the need to have independent radio frequencies has created technological fragmentation in public safety."

Eddie Reyes - Keeping the City of Angels safe: An inside look at the L.A. Regional Tactical Communications System: "In my last column I highlighted the South Carolina State Interoperability Project, commonly known as the “Palmetto 800 Trunked Radio Network and I received lots of positive feedback from some of the readers that follow this column. I especially want to thank the fine folks from South Carolina who contacted me as well as a Sheriff’s Deputy from Des Moines, IA. So I thought I would try my luck again this month and take readers across the country, literally, to the Los Angeles region and focus on their communications and interoperability solutions."