Regional dispatchers are worried they will be out of the communications loop after state public safety departments such as state police, warden and forestry services and marine patrol upgrade their radio communication systems from analog to digital.
The upgrade for the state departments, known as the MS Comnet project, carries a price tag of about $55 million, and when it is done will allow state public safety officials from Kittery to Madawaska to communicate via radio, according to Jim Ryan, executive director for Penobscot County Regional Communications.
But regional dispatch centers will need to upgrade to digital systems to hear the new transmissions.
And Ryan said when the state originally went out to sell the upgrade to legislators and community officials they proposed an analog system. In anticipation, Penobscot County purchased analog equipment to coordinate with the state, the state announced they were going digital, he said.
He said it would cost $500,000 for Penobscot County to acquire new equipment that would be compatible with the state system.
Knox County Regional Communications Center Director Linwood Lothrop also expressed similar concerns about the new state radio system and said it would make it more difficult for county dispatches to keep track of what is going on with state units.
Lt. Col. Raymond Bessette of the Maine State Police said the digital upgrade has been necessary for years to meet capacity needs for state emergency personnel.
The upgrade will allow many more radio frequencies that will serve emergency responders when they respond to escalating situations.
Bessette said the state asked the vendor for the radio upgrade to allow its county and municipal partners to hear the state radio communications and that will be done.
The public will also be able to follow the radio communications, although they will need to purchase digital scanners, he said.
Smaller municipalities do NOT have the $$ to dump into digital upgrades! Hopefully the brainiacs behind this monstrosity have taken into account the need to program the radios with analog channels for interoperability.
Maine relies heavily on amazingly dedicated volunteer fire fighters, for example, who continuously pour heart, soul and personal funds into protecting their community. The current analog radios (depending on which ones, obviously) can be purchased for under $500. A Kenwood digital handheld, for example, runs upwards of $1600 or more…do the math. In fact, the FCC has mandated narrowband frequencies by 2013 for all public safety agencies; many departments have complied and already bought the proper new analog radios.
The digital radio signal, by laws of physics, is less forgiving in rural areas with diverse terrain. The signal simply will “drop off” as opposed to fading out, allowing for less coverage. This necessitates the need for more radio towers, which start out (conservatively) at $250,000.
Several years ago (or more?) Motorola attempted to sell the state of Maine (under Baldacci) an 800 MHz system that would have been an utter debacle and boondoggle. The current vendors are vastly behind productivity deadlines, and have run into trouble with getting the needed frequencies licensed to them by the FCC. The vendors/MS-Commnet are even attempting to “steal” frequencies from the sacred railroad frequency pool…all of this is online for you, the taxpayer, to peruse. Read the justification letters…the MS-Commnet folks are getting desperate, as the RR industry understandably isn’t going down without a fight.
The end result needs to be utter safety for our law enforcement/fire/EMS professionals, regardless of whether it is a dedicated volunteer firefighter in mythical East Overshoe or a full-time police officer in a big municipality. When the radio is keyed, they’d better be able to communicate and be heard.
WE OWE THEM NO LESS.
** SNIP: Bessette said the state asked the vendor for the radio upgrade to
allow its county and municipal partners to hear the state radio
communications and that will be done.
The public will also be able to follow the radio communications, although they will need to purchase digital scanners, he said.**
DUH!! This STILL does NOT address the need for different mutual aid police units, et. al. to be able to communicate with the state digital radio network! Yes, put a scanner in the emergency vehicles (Pro-197 from Radio Shack, or the BCT-996D or equivalent). This STILL will NOT let the agencies communicate properly unless the state agencies switch to an analog channel to coordinate; all this elaborate communications infrastructure overhaul is under the auspices of “inter-operability”. Once the new digital system goes online dispatchers will have to “translate” via verbal relay the actual conversation. Look at it this way: drunken driver is being chased by a Maine State Trooper; a “Signal 1000” is called on, in the Bangor area, Zone 3 (154.905 MHz). Other surrounding municipalities (operating on non-digital, analog radios) are unable to listen in on the Zone 3 frequency unless they have a digital scanner installed in their cruisers. Unless the Trooper switches to a non-digital frequency, the other non-MSP agencies with analog radios are unable to coordinate non-lethal spike strips in the path of the offending drunken driver. The dispatcher, instead, is required to waste crucial time in passing on the information to the non-digital-equipped cruisers. The non-digital agencies, even if able to hear the digital radio traffic, will be unable to communicate directly the Trooper (unlike in years past.)
TRANSLATION: the Trooper is unable to get the necessary coordinated assistance from surrounding agencies in a timely fashion.
“Once the new digital system goes online dispatchers will have to “translate” via verbal relay the actual conversation.”
As a retired dispatcher, I can’t agree more that crucial time is wasted when the information has to be relayed. And time is not money, folks. Time is life or death in many emergency situations. This is not even considering the added fact that every time information has to be relayed, accuracy is compromised. I’m reminded of the old-fashioned childhood game of “Gossip,” except that this is no game.
Not that long ago Homeland Security pumped millions of dollars into the state to buy radio equipment that would allow agencies to talk to each other during emergencies “inter-operability”. A set of common channels were set up for emergencies. Departments bought radios that had multiple channels and were capable of narrow banding (required by 2013) Now the state changes the rules and goes to digital. Most officers scan through the area channels while they work so they know what is going on around them. Is there a chase coming their way? Is there an armed robbery in the next town over? Is there an armed person on the loose. Now the officers will have no idea what any of the state agencies are doing in the next town over or even in their own town. This does not sound like a step forward. The towns and dispatch centers will end up spending local tax dollars to catch up.
Most digital Radios also accept analog , its time to move forward
That is NOT the point…when the MSP are on their trunked, DIGITAL system, the analog radios will NOT receive the radio traffic unless over a digital scanner. Currently, different agencies can directly communicate over the MSP Zone system (Zone 1 in Gray, Zone 2 in Augusta, Zone 3 in Orono, and Zone 1 North in Houlton.)
The new system will NOT allow analog radio communication on the MSP system UNLESS the Trooper deliberately leaves his/her Zone repeater (again, in digital trunking!) and goes to either an analog regional repeater or simplex (short-range, my antenna to your antenna.)
DAC’s have been around forever. That is a digital to analog converter. These could be installed on existing analog equipment, to receive digital information, and pass it on as analog. You get the idea of how this works if two cell phones are in the same room and people are talking to each other. There is a slight delay in what the people are saying, and what others are hearing on their cell phones. This is the result of an analog signal (voice) being converted into a digital signal (radio wave), and then the reverse happens on the other cell phone. Same thing with Vonage and Time-Warner phone service, a slight, but noticeable delay.
This is only a patch, and does not fix interoperability, but it certainly will save the smaller departments lots of money since the state went on with digital.
As far as digital being superior, in rural areas it isn’t. How many of you lost TV reception in the last analog to digital upgrade when the TV stations went HD? In downeast Maine we lost all TV reception. We used to be able to marginally watch Bangor, and get TV from Saint John. It’s going to be the same issue when the state goes digital with emergency services. Just covering the county will be a massive undertaking.
Obviously, cooperation between law enforcement and public safety agencies relies on the ability to efficiently and reliably communicate with one another in an emergency situation. I don’t see how this new system will provide a way for this to happen without local agencies shelling out more money to replace perfectly functional equipment. As previously mentioned, many local agencies have already spent significant money to comply with the FCC’s narrowbanding mandate. In many cases, this money has come from grant programs, which in my experience often won’t award money to an organization twice for two similar purposes.
The state might do well to look at what other organizations that communicate statewide have in place for infrastructure. The amateur radio operators in this state have access to a linked repeater network that allows communications across a large part of Maine. The MM&A railroad operates a wide area system as well. Both of these systems use analog VHF radios.
We have ample evidence from the digital TV conversion to show that digital signals do not propagate as effectively over parts of Maine’s terrain as analog signals. I hope the state has done its due diligence in investigating the loss of coverage from its current towers a switch to digital may cause.
Finally, I have concerns as an amateur radio operator as to how this will affect the work amateur radio operators do in conjunction with other agencies during an emergency. In the federal statute establishing the Amateur Radio Service, one of the reasons given is the “recognition and enhancement of the value of the amateur service to the public as a voluntary noncommercial communication
service, particularly with respect to providing emergency communications”. Many amateur radio operators provide this service through the Amateur Radio Emergency Service or other programs coordinated through local emergency management agencies. In an emergency situation, effective communication is essential to keeping people safe. If we were to have another Ice Storm – level event, where repeater systems statewide may be compromised, not having the ability to monitor state transmissions directly would be a huge hindrance to amateur radio operators who would be providing communications support at hospitals, emergency operations centers, and other key locations.
If the state is going to make this change, they need to do more than provide a way for other agencies to listen. They need to work with these groups to ensure effective communications between agencies in a time of emergency. Situations such as 9/11, though far different in scope and landscape than the “expected” type of emergency in Maine, have been thoroughly analyzed in recent years. They show that communications interoperability is key in an emergency situation.