Keene, TX - Commissioners set fees for cities to join new radio system

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Thunderbolt

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ff-medic

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KEENE, Texas — Johnson County commissioners interrupted Monday's regular session for a workshop to discuss what access and maintenance fees to charge in-county and out-of-county cities who join the new radio communication system under development with the city of Fort Worth.

Commissioners set fees for cities to join new radio system - The Keene Star - Keene, Texas


With the payments I seen, it would be beeter for each agency to get their own radio system. A agency self owned radio system insures smootheness of operation, over crowding, and each agency can have their own administrator, instead of answering to another agency. And what is to say that payemts could not go up. Payments that could have eventually owning your own radio system.

Plus, each agency owning their own radio system, they can taylor their own radi system to their own needs and importances. And security wise, it benefits the individual agency who owns and controls their own radio system.

As I understand , as long as a public safety agency, lets another agency use their radio frequencys, it is legal, SO Long as the prmary agency has enough mobiles/portables for licensure. Adding mobiles or portable to a license would seem beneficial to me. A single, department/agency radio system would also prevent over crowding, and over burden on the radio backbone itself.

Me. My opinion. A Kenwood or Vertex. Right of the top of my head - and with my "current" research , I would go with a Kenwood Communications radio system - AES capable, towers and all. The money as I seen, they could own their own radio system in a short time - Backbone system, software and hardware.

Security wise, a department / agency owned radio system is better.

FF - Medic !!!
 

jparks29

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With the payments I seen, it would be beeter for each agency to get their own radio system. A agency self owned radio system insures smootheness of operation, over crowding, and each agency can have their own administrator, instead of answering to another agency. And what is to say that payemts could not go up. Payments that could have eventually owning your own radio system.

Plus, each agency owning their own radio system, they can taylor their own radi system to their own needs and importances. And security wise, it benefits the individual agency who owns and controls their own radio system.

As I understand , as long as a public safety agency, lets another agency use their radio frequencys, it is legal, SO Long as the prmary agency has enough mobiles/portables for licensure. Adding mobiles or portable to a license would seem beneficial to me. A single, department/agency radio system would also prevent over crowding, and over burden on the radio backbone itself.

Me. My opinion. A Kenwood or Vertex. Right of the top of my head - and with my "current" research , I would go with a Kenwood Communications radio system - AES capable, towers and all. The money as I seen, they could own their own radio system in a short time - Backbone system, software and hardware.

Security wise, a department / agency owned radio system is better.

FF - Medic !!!

Same reason that agencies lease cars.

It looks better to the bean counters that you're spending $250k this year on communications, instead of 30 million over the next 3 yrs.
 

rapidcharger

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The price wont be in dollars, it'll be in lives.

Its bad enough when first responders in a burning building sound like they're taking part in a hot dog eating contest but doesn't anyone else see the huge security issue staring everyone in the face by putting every last public agency on one network?
 

jim202

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Not trying to take one side or the other, but one important fact here that no one is considering is are there enough frequencies available to put up your own trunking system?

In many parts of the country, there are no 800 channels left. Many state agencies are moving to 700 MHz because of channel availability. Even the 700 channels have their own set of problems.

The charges that some owning agencies are casting onto outside agencies to use the existing trunking system may or may not be in line with the actual costs. These costs are in many cases trying to make the system pay for itself with outside users. If this is the case, then yes, your own system is a much better cost trade off.

The bean counters only see the bottom line of what the radio system is costing the municipality. If it cost $30 million and the life span is projected for 10 years that ends up a $3 million expense a year. Then divide in the number of radios on the system to come up with a yearly cost per radio. Don't forget the maintenance costs that have to be added into the formula.

Problem is as more radios get added to the system, the agency collecting the fees keeps forgetting that the cost per radio goes down. They don't tell anyone about this small fact and just keep charging the original rate. Then one day the vendor comes along and says you need to upgrade the system because you have exceeded the max number of radios it can support. Now the bean counters come back and say OK, how much is this upgrade going to cost. Back to the original formula and change the numbers to meet the new goal of breaking even. It's an ever ending battle of chasing your tail.
 

MTS2000des

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Good points there Jim.

All this room was made at 150 and 450 but most plans call for 700 and 800.








And those bands are lousy.

What makes you think 150 or 450MHz is the answer? There are other issues, especially a lack of a bandplan on 150MHz. Putting together any large mutlichannel system means dealing with things like combiners and multicouplers. Not to mention, VHF is a poor choice for urban areas, poor in building penetration, and high noise floor from every CPU clock and part 15 device coming from China filling homes and offices.

700/800 don't have problems with in building coverage in urban areas, are immune from alot of environmental interference, and there are solid band plans in practice for coordinating licensees. Not to mention, with great RX/TX sep, duplexers, combiners and muti-couplers don't have to work as hard.

Alot more to it than appears on paper. Visit any site for such a system and you'll see why.
 

jim202

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What makes you think 150 or 450MHz is the answer? There are other issues, especially a lack of a bandplan on 150MHz. Putting together any large mutlichannel system means dealing with things like combiners and multicouplers. Not to mention, VHF is a poor choice for urban areas, poor in building penetration, and high noise floor from every CPU clock and part 15 device coming from China filling homes and offices.

700/800 don't have problems with in building coverage in urban areas, are immune from alot of environmental interference, and there are solid band plans in practice for coordinating licensees. Not to mention, with great RX/TX sep, duplexers, combiners and muti-couplers don't have to work as hard.

Alot more to it than appears on paper. Visit any site for such a system and you'll see why.

There is a bunch of hype that has been circulated for a number of years that 800 provides better building penetration. With first hand on site testing on this subject, I will place my bets on the VHF band for coverage. Have done side by side testing of all 3 bands. In all cases we found that the VHF radios provided better in building coverage.

Yes you do have all the low level noise floor from many of today's poor designed networking and computer devices.

The down side with VHF that was pointed out is the FCC has never chose to resolve the poor decision that was made way back in day one about no band plan. This makes trying to obtain channels to use for any repeater operation hard. The cavities for the duplex operation are big and expensive.

A major down side to the 700 / 800 band is the attenuation that happens from foliage. The biggest problem is from long needle pine trees. The needle length is just about the resonant length for the 700 / 800 band. As such, any use in pine tree infested regions is rough. they just act like a big sponge and make any RF signals in these band segments go away. Tower sites have to be much closer than in open regions or regions with different types of trees.

Bottom line here is depending on what kind of region your in, the band choice can make or break a radio system. My personal choice would be UHF for city and VHF for urban and country locations. Being that most city locations don't have any more 800 channels, agencies are being led by the vendors to the 700 band so that they can make max profit.

Everyone has seen just how expensive these radios are. Plus agencies get led down the golden path to the vendors bank by being told they have to go to a trunking system on this band. They are told there are no other choices. Being stupid and not checking what the actual truth is, these agencies enjoy the wine and dine dance and the vendors laugh all the way to the bank.
 
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