what happened to all the 900 trunked systems?

[tommyscan]

In any frequency guide and internet listings many businesses are still listed using the 900 band for trunked ops BUT very little is heard in my area or western nassau for this band segment. Only mta bus and some conventional taxis I hear other than lots of pager noise and interference.Guess they all switched to nextel?/

[scannerman5555]

same thing in suffolk county too only rides unlimited radio system but no buses on it only a taxi cab co in ronk .... Comfort Ride Taxi on it now ! .... about 15+ years ago my cab co was on the 935 mhz area selden ; manorville ; plainville & W T C repeaters all gone now ! ...... don

[CqDx]

hi tommyscan,

not to hijack your thread, do you know what system (if any) does MTA Long Island Bus operate on? I have them in the Nassau Co. EDACS system but never heard anything from those 4 talkgroups.

[scannerman5555]

MTA Long Island Bus operate on? I have them in the Nassau Co. EDACS system

MTA talk groups work on my new scanner BC 346 XLT everything come in also i00000 #'s to sounds like mta i call ....don

by the way I'm in suffolk county .... Islip town area loud & clear too !

[tommyscan]

nyc mta is on the 900 band around 935.00-938.000/ but not that interesting.MostlyI-calls and boring announcements.Guess taxi companies and delivery services have no longer found the need since direct connect gets instant access from driver-dispatch.When I go out east to visit my moms grave plot in calverton eastern suffolk pulls in alot of interesting systems which are deaf here in nassau county.Thanks to the scannermans site up do date info can be found for suffolk scannig. Thanks to Don for all his hard work.

[CqDx]

Thank you guys.

To scannerman5555, is it the EDACS system you hear the icalls on?

[radioman2001]

To give you a little bit of history on the 900mhz trunk frequencies. The FCC rightly mandated that manufacturers could only license/own one trunking system. This resulted in a backdoor way of Motorola, to get frequencies for their systems. Existing customers applied for licenses, in the thousands for 900mhz frequencies. Motorola said "We will apply for you and pay all up front costs, you just let us use the frequencies and we will pay you for them". I know in the N.Y.C. market, most of Motorola's channels were owned by a dry cleaning company. With the advent of NEXTEL, Motorola's next power move for radio, they just let the agreements with these license holders expire, along with the license's. Near the end, the users on the 900 systems basically got screwed by Motorola, who said"If you want 900 mhz trunking, put it up youself" Hence the abandonment of 900mhz. There were some licenses that were sold to NEXTEL in the N.Y.C. area, but for the most part, that band went back to the FCC for resale at a later date.

[monitor142]

As another side note, as mentioned above many of these trunked systems were built out by Motorola and licensed under the end users. Many of these systems were transferred to a few Nextel shell companies mainly one called FCI900. They ran these systems and what is happening now is the systems are being shut down and the 900MHz SMR spectrum is now shifted to Nextel iDEN sites. All newer Nextel iDEN phones can operate not only on 800MHz SMR but also 900MHz SMR freqs (not to be confused with the Direct Talk stuff on 902-928MHz). This is very prevalent in areas undergoing rebanding so Nextel has enough spectrum to do the freq swap. It has occurred all across the US including here in Southern California where there used to be a well built out 900SMR systems on many of our high mountaintop radio sites. As a matter of fact an iDEN site here at my employer has one of the three sectors operating on 900MHz only, the other 2 are still 800MHz.

As far as the future, I don't know what the decision was from the FCC regarding returning the 900 spectrum once (if ever) the rebanding is done. This will not affect privately or gov't owned systems such as the large Edison electric utility 900MHz SmartZone system we have here in California.

-M142

[FLRAILMAN]

Hey Scannerman5555, I grew up in C.I. I visited there last year, unreal, people from the "new population" were looking at me like "I" didn't belong there, what the hell happened?

Central Islip, New York - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

FLRAILMAN

[SCANdal]

Originally Posted by tommyscan

nyc mta is on the 900 band around 935.00-938.000/ but not that interesting.MostlyI-calls and boring announcements.

tom,

I want to clarify this statement.

MTA New York City Transit buses use an 800 MHz trunked system (detailed here: MTA NYC Transit Trunked System ) and MTA Bus Company buses use a 900 MHz trunked system (detailed here DOT BUS TRUNKED SYSTEM )

5555, you are correct. MTA Long Island Bus buses operate on the Nassau County 800 MHz EDACS.

SCANdal

[transitman]

On my last trip to NYC, NY Waterway buses were using the FCI 900 call sign WPYH777. The frequencies are:

936.175
936.4625
937.15
937.9125

The system is MOT analog and the TG for NY Waterway is 016.

I don't know if this system has been shut down; perhaps someone in the NYC area can provide an update!