JPS says goodbye ?

We got word today at our shop that JPS is pulling the plug. Anyone else get this info as well ?

Sorry to see them go. They made a great product and their service was excellent !

The SNV voter and NXU-2A were great products !

I have seen the pdf letter that was sent out. I talked with one of the dealers I found on an Internet search today and they confirmed the information.

My gut feeling is they over saturated the market with some of their products that they just seemed to refuse to improve over time. Customers like to feel comfortable with a company that is forward thinking and willing to listen to their customers and put that feedback into their product. JPS seemed to just ignore their customers and live on the product they first produced. Just because your parent company was Raytheon, it didn't mean your product was the best. It just showed your marketing and dealer network was better. Time has proven that all this effort didn't pass the test of time.

Having a strong interest in the radio interoperability field, I found that their use of a spoke and hub, multiple gateway type connection was just plain stupid. It required a different IP address of each port on the spoke and hub connection at the master site. Plus if that master gateway went down, the entire network also failed. Not a smart way of providing multiple network gateway connections.

Their gateways were also hardware restricted. If you wanted to change to a different type of radio connection, you not only had to buy a different radio interface cable, you also had to buy a new interface plug in card. This made any radio upgrades an expensive process because of the plug in card replacement requirement.

There are other gateway companies out there that have listened to their customers and produced a well working gateway that can be easily made to work with multiple gateways and not need a ton of different IP addresses at a central point of failure location. The software defined gateways made radio changes much lower in cost than dealing with they way JPS forced you to do an upgrade.

I guess we have seen another company dealing with radios & interfaces that has gone the way of RCA and a number of other companies no longer in business. Times change and customers demand updates and customer care from the companies they deal with. Poor response translates into poor business.

I saw a one line email saying this too. It said support will continue.
Anyone have the letter to post?

Thunderknight said:

I saw a one line email saying this too. It said support will continue.
Anyone have the letter to post?

Click to expand...

It's over on communications.support

Raytheon JPS Communications Ceases Operations
http://www.mccmag.com/Features/FeaturesDetails/FID/638

Sorry to hear they are closing up shop. The SNV is a good unit, it did however have some bugs and quirks with audio delay issues and some others issues that I can't recall. Like what was said, it was like improvement just stopped and you had to just deal with it. But, all in all it is a robust reliable unit.

I have a large statewide customer using about 25 NXU units to connect base stations back to a MCC 5500. The NXU's are rock solid.

The SNV web interface has been a excellent tool for troubleshooting systems.

Gonna miss those guys.

Thunderknight said:

I saw a one line email saying this too. It said support will continue.
Anyone have the letter to post?

Click to expand...

Benny Hillman, gentleman and scholar, was told at 3:30 to clean out his desk. Benny WAS support, so we're on our own.

Cross your fingers that someone will buy the line, be more responsive to needed changes and hire Benny.

JPS founder Don Scott is in talks to buy key assets.

I wonder why Raytheon was so quick to dump JPS? Did they see funding drying up? They might not want to sell anyway for the same reason that they abruptly shut down the company.

I have seen a few places where an ACU-1000 just sat there unused because nobody knew how it was configured nor how to use it, so your tax dollars hard at work there.

I guess their voting system is pretty good and the NXU-2 as well since there seem to be plenty of those out there.

jeatock said:

Benny Hillman, gentleman and scholar, was told at 3:30 to clean out his desk. Benny WAS support, so we're on our own.

Cross your fingers that someone will buy the line, be more responsive to needed changes and hire Benny.

Click to expand...

I second the accolade to Benny. Great fellow, and I'm greatly saddened to hear how he was treated.

I recall when Raytheon acquired JPS and, at the time, thought it was great that JPS would have Raytheon's support. Guess that didn't work out well.

Has there been any mention of support for existing products? We installed an ACU-1000 in our command bus at least a decade ago and it's been a lifesaver. Fortunately, we haven't need much support but who knows?

JPS reopens under former ownership.

Thank you Don Scott!

New web site and phone numbers are at JPS Interoperability Solutions

ACU and WAIS training schedules are available as of May.

My many SNV-12's are no longer orphans. Okay, they're old-school analog in the world of new, glitzy and shiny, but then again I'm an old tip-and-ring sorta guy.

I saw in January the initial pdf about closing up shop, then recently the possibility of some personnel buying the company.

My experience was with many military and police departments getting these for interoperability. Then they sat unused most of the time. Me and another tech at the time annoyed Motorola by making a template for use with the ACU-1000. Raytheon didn't pay the "Motorola tax", so did not get a template for many of the Motorola radios. Well after trial and error, we figured it out and dispersed the info.

Never used the IP version, but the ACU-1000 and NXU-2 interfaces worked well.

Telex / Bosch Communications made better gear for less money in my opinion though.

Then Zetron tried making their MAX Dispatch and Call-Taking mess.

If it were my money, I would either go all Motorola or Motorola radio and Telex/Bosch interface gear.

Raytheon made good gear but very expensive. You had better have three letter agency or Federal Gov money behind you to buy it.

I like their SNV voters. The web interface is the cat's meow for troubleshooting and killing receivers when my &*^% LEDR links goes down.

I have an entire railroad running on NXU 2's. Very nice little units. Pricey, but reliable and work well.

I am glad to see JPS make a comeback.