RACOM

Can anybody tell me what's happening with RACOM? In my area, (extreme NW Iowa) we used to have a tower in Worthington, MN that covered us. That went off the air years ago, and everybody switched to Sioux Center (IA). I have now verified that that signal is also off the air.

A little further out into MN and SD, the former RACOM/East River Electric towers seem to have switched to DMR. The RACOM and East River systems seemed to be connected several years ago.

I haven't heard an EDACS control channel in so long, I had to look up what it sounded like to do a search. I heard none. But I did hear four DMR control channels from the outlying area.

Is RACOM still a going concern elsewhere? Because here it appears to be dead. I heard they were switching to P25, but I have yet to see any evidence of that up in my corner of the state. I also cannot find a current coverage map. That might tell me something too if I could find it.

Can anybody offer any info?

With the cell phone being the normal communication method for businesses I don't think there is any reason that companies would just build sites all over expecting to sell service on their system. It seems like they only built sites or systems for public safety people who pay them to do that.

I agree. But there were several statewide talkgroups on there for state agencies, such as HS/EMD, Public Health, DCI, and other law enforcement. If we don't have towers up here, how are these agencies supposed to use the system?

Public health sounds like they are mostly using tablets with an app that is setup by RACOM and can operate with their P25 system. That is changing as State Public Health is moving to ISICS. As for DCI they are moving to ISICS as part of the whole umbrella of DPS. I haven't heard anything about State Homeland security but would assume they will be on ISICS at some point.

Defintely ISICS is not up and running fully yet. I would guess most of these agencies outside of Public Health are more tied to cell phones than anything else. Until time of disaster I'm sure they don't use radios that much and don't have that need for one-to-many on radio vs one-to-one conversation on cellular.

A friend of mine says public health network at least does some checks and nets to make sure things are up and running once in a while. There was a comment not long ago on here by someone else that they are on that VOIP / ROIP system and he had an acronym for what they call their radio system but I don't remember that without searching back a bit.

If they're still using RACOM, perhaps those where there are no towers are using RACOM's Harris BeOn app on a phone or tablet.

radioboy75 said:

If they're still using RACOM, perhaps those where there are no towers are using RACOM's Harris BeOn app on a phone or tablet.

Click to expand...

This is accurate.

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