Trying to convert from Nextel to Two-way

[Maxx102]

Hello everyone,

Due to the current economic situation in today's world, I tried to be the good little employee in my company and began exploring options on how to the save the company money. One idea that I had was to replace the 50 or so Nextels that we currently use (all split between Engineering, Janitorial, Security, and our group of volunteers who form our Safety Team) with two-way radios.

I went ahead and made contact with a two-way communications firm and requested some information on the latest and greatest in two-way radios. Since I have been using what I call "professional grade" radios since I was 16 years old (i'm 33 now) and therefore I felt comfortable that two-way radios would be the perfect solution. Now what is my definition of "professional grade", well it's simple - radios like the HT1000's, MT1000's, and the like, not the cheap FRS radios you can find everywhere.

I forwarded the information I gathered to my supervisor who took the next step and invited the sales rep out for a tour of the facilities. A week later, the rep returned with an radio engineer who would have a better understanding of what our needs were.

Fast forward a month and the rep and engineer return to do a walkthrough test with two MOTOTRBO portables and a matching repeater. We were looking at the MOTOTRBO's because 1 - it's digital, 2 - you can still have your "direct connect" type private talk, and 3 - It works like a normal radio.

The walkthrough test goes well and the only problem spots were in the lower level elevator (duh - even I knew that would be an issue). So the sales rep and engineer depart and I get word that all we were waiting for was pricing information.

I then learn that management poo-pooed the idea because of some objections that were made, some of which were based on myth or previous attempts with crappy equipment. And this was before we received any pricing information from the vendor we had been working with.

One of the objections was that we would only have a two-mile range with the radios and repeater? I am no expert, but I have worked at other locations and I could hear and transmit fine 6 miles away, the farthest we would go with the repeater in our building would be 4 miles.

Another objection was if we needed to go beyond our normal location to a special event, we couldn't bring the radios with because they weren't licensed in that area of the metro area.

Here were my reasons for the conversion -
1 - Save money: as it stands, every time our nextels use the group talk channels we are charged, every time we texted or receive a text message we are charged. (these are full functioning phones, not just the two-way walkie talkie feature. Based upon a years worth of data, I was able to prove that we would be able to save money in the long run.

2 - the two-way walkie talkie feature stinks compaired to a two-way radio. Anyone who has seen the second and half to two second delay knows what I am talking about.

3 - Safety, right now we are relying a 3rd party for all of our communication needs (routine and emergency), what happens when the towers go out, or - as we have already experienced, our talk groups get deleted (accidently or on purpose I don't know).

[Ray_Air]

If range isn't any issue you could try Motorola DTR's. They are digital and you can program they for private channels (ex- security, housekeeping, engineering, first responders, supervisors,etc). You can program them yourself if you buy the keyboard.

If you need a repeater these will not work as they are 1W 900MHz FHSS (VSELP) simplex only, license free.

I work in a 300,000sq/ft building and they work fine.

[Utah_Viper]

If this is for a single building I would look into TriSquare eXrs radios.

[rfm8743]

Maxx102, I've had the same discussion with my boss... the MotoTRBO radios are something we are considering as the range with Digital radio is much better. I'll also mention that there is a company by the name of Teldio that we've been watching. They have a solution that solves the problem of reaching outside lines from a two-way radio and ties in nicely with PBX systems (aka: perfect replacement for Nextels). I believe their webpage is Teldio.

[Ray_Air]

Originally Posted by Utah_Viper

If this is for a single building I would look into TriSquare eXrs radios.

There ya go, way cheaper than the DTR's.

No license needed & low equipment costs.

[fineshot1]

Originally Posted by Maxx102

One of the objections was that we would only have a two-mile range with the radios and repeater? I am no expert, but I have worked at other locations and I could hear and transmit fine 6 miles away, the farthest we would go with the repeater in our building would be 4 miles.

This depends on how the repeater antenna, feedline, power output and local terrain all play together
so you can not say just because the other repeater you used went that far that your's will also.

Originally Posted by Maxx102

Another objection was if we needed to go beyond our normal location to a special event, we couldn't bring the radios with because they weren't licensed in that area of the metro area.

You could get licensed for an "itinerant" simplex frequency to use at these other special event locations.
This along with your repeater pair of frequencies should be what you need.

[shaft]

Perhaps getting in touch with a real Nextel rep, (not a customer service person on the phone) and negotiate better pricing on your service plan would suit you better?

[Maxx102]

Thanks for the responses, here are the other problems. We have over 1 million sq. ft. of office space in several different building, so we do require a repeater.

two - While I said Nextels have a place in the work community as a quick way of getting a hold of someone without dialing all of the numbers, I have seen that they work very poorly in trying to organize mass response. First there is the annoying 1 1/2 second delay from the time the transmitting nextel sends out information to when the rest of the nextels receive the transmission.

While we have access to shoulder / speaker mic's and surveillance mic/earpiece kits, they don't work well if at all....

All of these nextels are fully enabled so we receive text messages from people we don't know (all are "spam" type texts ranging from new windows for your house to more "adult" related items), and we receive those occational accidental "chirps" from people who made a misdial in the DC function.

re-negotiate is not possible as I have been told by the rep themselves that we are getting the best price possible.

Lack of onsite control and monitoring of said frequencies. Right now if we lost the nextel network we are sunk with with no way to communicate except through landlines or yelling.

[Raven95150]

Do the Nextels you use have phone service also? If they do, you might look into removing the phone service to save some money. I work for a local courier service and we use Nextel for all of our dispatching. The phones we have only work on talkgroups and direct connect, they are not allowed to make/receive phone calls, send/receive text messages or use web access. We actually use 4 different talkgroups...the first one is our main dispatch channel, the second one is for admin/customer service issues, the third one is a driver to driver channel, and the fourth is used by a customer that we do a dedicated route for every day.

We experimented with a company that leased out talkgroups on an LTR trunking system, but that didn't work very good so we are still using Nextel.