Safety radios to get update
Changes not expected to cause problems
By GAVIN LESNICK
Courier & Press staff writer 464-7449 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Monday, January 22, 2007
A nationwide reshuffling high-frequency radio assignments will
ultimately require reprogramming and replacing all the radios linked to
Vanderburgh County's Central Dispatch. But officials warn that the
changes are still at least a year away from being implemented and the
shift should be seamless.
The changes harken back to an April 2000 Federal Communications
Commission report that showed interference to public safety radios in
the 800 MHZ band from cellular telephone operators.
To eliminate that problem, officials with the FCC and Nextel, which
operates on the spectrum, agreed to reconfigure the band. The plan calls
for separating different portions of the spectrum for public safety
radio systems, which are what emergency responders use, from part of the
band that Nextel uses for cellular and mobile devices.
For Vanderburgh County, that means shifting a few frequencies on the
spectrum, said Bill Wright, a computer technician and communications
specialist with Central Dispatch.
But all of the radios linked to Central Dispatch, more than 1,600 in
all, will have to be reprogrammed or replaced. Newer models are
reprogrammable, but hundreds of older models will have to be replaced
entirely because they are incompatible with the new frequencies.
As part of the plan, however, no local agencies will be responsible for
the costs.
"Nextel is supposed to pay for replacing the radios or pay for
reprogramming the radios," Wright said. "They are to foot the bill on
that. The FCC has basically mandated this."
Wright said the reprogramming process will take varying amounts of time
depending on the size of their agency and the number of radios they
have. Evansville police, for example, will take longer than smaller
agencies.
"For the Police Department it may take a month or two for them to get
all of their work done," Wright said.
Agencies are still in the process of taking inventory of what radios
will need to be reprogrammed and what will need to be replaced, Wright said.
JoAnne Smith, the director of Central Dispatch, cautioned that it is a
long process that still has some time before the changes take place.
"It"s not anything that's going to happen fast," she said. "When anybody
lays a hand on a new radio will be more than a year from now. And we
started this a year and a half ago."
This is also just the first of four phases across the country. States
were divided up into the different phases, with the last one consisting
of border states where treaties with Canada and Mexico make the process
even more difficult.
Wright said Nextel initially set aside $2 billion to cover the
reconfiguration, but the FCC has since decided against a cap for costs.
He said it will achieve the goal of providing Nextel its own space on
the spectrum and eliminating interference to public safety, but that
some people question if this was the best option.
"I think everybody has a lot of questions about whether it makes sense
or not," Wright said. "It makes sense as far as the interference goes.
It moves them out of the bandwidth and it definitely solves the problem.
But only Nextel knows if it is going to be profitable for them or not."
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2007/jan/22/safety-radios-to-get-update/
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