The great /\/\otorola Hype!
Someone, ( Motorola ) sold yet ANOTHER department on the solution to all of their problems by way of encryption! Now, don't get me wrong, encryption has it's rightful places. The medics talking to a hospital giving out patient vital information, the detectives working a sting or special teams like SWAT, etc...
Imagine the nightmare of some member of the media or even the bad guy himself having radio access to play by play of a SWAT team at a hostage negotiation. Ok, that I understand. But full time encryption on everything? Nope! Instead of spending money on data technology, MDTs like has already been mentioned are a perfect way to send and receive sensitive info without the need of full time encryption. It's not the fault of the regular patrol officers. It's the people further up the food chain making the decisions. We all KNOW who is the one entity pushing and / or selling this to departments. /\/\ore and /\/\ore-torola. I will never understand why this state works the way it does. Better yet, I am absolutely amazed how the different departments manage not to trip all over each other and get hurt. When it comes to communicating and working together, the northeast has a "0" rating overall. I had the pleasure of working with Emergency Management personnel for about 3 years. Conference after conference that we attended, made one thing very clear: everyone wants to play by themselves. People make frequency and band choices without thinking about who else they may need to talk to during an emergency. In some cases, there is animosity within the town agencies themselves. PD won't talk to FD because of XXXX. EMS gets lost in the shuffle somewhere. It's ridiculous. Emergency management? forget about it! Some towns don't even have a person in that position as director or manager. and these are the people you are supposed to rely on in an EMERGENCY! Take a look at Trumbull for example: PD is on 800mhz. WHY? because at the time of them looking to get off low band, they were told this was the miracle cure for what ails them. This was the wave of the future and you need to ride it!. Yeah right! They used to have to call dispatch from their cars in the parking lot BEFORE going into the mall on a call because there was no reception at all once they went inside..Mind you, this is a PILICE department I'm talking about here.What happens if they need help once inside the mall? HMM. Anybody know exactly how far is the mall from the police station? 2-3 minutes maybe less. After years of negotiations, Westfield, the mall property owner finally let them put something on one of the roofs and now that is no longer an issue. Now, lets move on to FD. They shared a low band frequency 33.56 with Easton Fire. The channel had NO PL / DPL tone! NONE! Yet, as has already been pointed out, they have been licensed for UHF for years! YEARS! Then, they complicate things by adding a VHF frequency to patch in the low band that clearly should be abandoned altogether. Now, public works is on low band I believe. There is no frequency listed for Emergency Mgmt. So, in case a major emergency where wires are down, lights out, phone lines down, etc..nobody can talk to anybody to get anything done. PD would not be able to talk to FD because there is no current way for them to patch in from their 800 mhz channel, then FD would not be able to talk to PW for things such as tree removal, street clearing etc.EMS is all by itself somewhere in the frequency shuffle on VHF not being able to talk to anyone outside the medical realm. Pure chaos in town, but then again, we are all set,, we have encryption.......
Manny