New Ontario County system?

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.337 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

Ontario awards contract for $9M in radio upgrades

http://www.fltimes.com/articles/2010/10/11/news/doc4cb338d7d0b43745537263.txt

The articIe implies it'll be a combined police, fire, and EMS system.

I'm not sure how a "new, all-digital system" will "help responders better coordinate efforts with other agencies in the event of large-scale, mutual-aid incidents" -- the units that respond to my house already have the surrounding counties' frequencies in their radios in addition to common frequencies. If there's a need to replace old, busted radios, just say so

Well, for starters, if they don't upgrade all their transmitter and receiver sites plus the entire sheriff's fleet to narrowband, they won't be able to interact with neighboring counties after 1/1/13 or sooner depending on when the others make the jump. Monroe County does this coming weekend. Surrounding counties will convert soon if they have not already done so.

I suspect that some marketing language made it through to the reporter's article, probably direct from the Harris press release.

However, it would be interesting to know what the $9 million is actually buying since some of the new UHF fire service infrastructure is already in place that will eventually replace the old low band gear.

Ontario and Monroe County sheriffs are not interoperable now. Narrowbanding won't help that. They are in different frequency bands.

With the way systems are being built, with Interop , different system can talk to eachother, although not perfect.

154.815 fm

Will channel 1 dispatch 154.8150 fm still be ontario countys CH 1 or will all freqs change over time ? ?

Thanks 511

Does anyone know if this is going to be a 700/800 trunk system or are they keeping their VHF channels?

The County refers to it as a 700 MHz system.
http://www.co.ontario.ny.us/planning/acrobat/EIS/radio_fgeis.pdf

There's an STA for some old SWN 800 MHz frequencies, presumably for testing.

DaveNF2G said:

Ontario and Monroe County sheriffs are not interoperable now. Narrowbanding won't help that. They are in different frequency bands.

Click to expand...

But with Monroe going with the RF Harris multiband radio,they'll be able to talk to Ontario and Wayne's new system.

w2csx said:

But with Monroe going with the RF Harris multiband radio,they'll be able to talk to Ontario and Wayne's new system.

Click to expand...

The Harris multi-band radios were only given to some police chiefs, the fire and ems coordinators and deputy coordinators by the county Public Safety Communications department.

Monroe County Fire and EMS agencies are still responsible for purchasing their own equipment for the new system. The likelyhood of an agency buying a XG-100 portable for each functional position (medic, interior firefighter, etc) is slim to none.

tpg