Finally! 800 MHz Retuning Begins

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blantonl

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DENVER --Physical retuning in the 800 MHz rebanding process has begun in Colorado, with one of the nation's largest public-safety systems starting the technical and logistical challenge this week. Nearly 30,000 subscribers will be returned as part of the Consolidated Communications Network of Colorado (CCNC).

Colorado's statewide Digital Trunked Radio (DTR) system officials signed the final documents with Sprint Nextel April 4 after six months of negotiations. The carrier could pay up to $14 million to reband all the state's equipment.

The state has been divided into three regions, all of which began retuning May 7 in conjunction with Motorola and three two-way radio repair shops. The project will be used as a model for the rest of the country, said state officials.

The state's goal is to get the majority of the work done by fall, when heavy snow could hamper the efforts. "We need to get it done before the snow flies," said Dennis Kalvels, electronic engineer and project manager of rebanding for the state of Colorado.

The work will be complicated by several factors. The state is still building out its network and will be adding new sites all summer; construction on a new site will begin each week throughout the summer months, and the new sites will also have to be rebanded, according to Mike Borrego, Colorado electronic engineer. In addition, Sprint Nextel hasn't cleared some frequencies yet, so negotiations will continue between CCNC and Sprint Nextel to address those issues.

All subscribers on the DTR systems will be touched twice, officials said. After the subscribers are touched the first time - scheduled to be completed by the end of August - the state will reband all infrastructure, bidirectional amplifiers, and international tactical channels (ITACs). Then a second touch of subscribers will be followed by rebanding suitcase and vehicle repeaters.

The radio repair shop in each region has a mobile trailer set up with all equipment needed to do the work, said Terri Thornberry, Motorola's lead project manager. The trailers will travel to each county in the state. On the first two days of retuning, more than 100 radios were retuned each day.
 

sflmonitor

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Does anyone know if the software/reflashing updates will be backwards compatible? For instance, will a person with upgraded flashware be able to monitor a rebanded system as well as a system that has not rebanded?
 
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DaveNF2G

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This is the first Public Safety retuning. Several commercial systems have already been retuned in downstate New York (and probably other places).
 

studgeman

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They have been doing it in Boston on the Cambridge, Boston, Massport and Mass State police system. The way it is basically working is they are programming another system into the radio with new control channels. I believe there is a old/new channel plan selection so the 800MHz channel numbers line up right. This way you can have the radio work on a rebanded and a non-rebanded system, or a mixed system. after they touch all the radios they pick a magic date and flip the infrastructure and everyone switches their radios to the "other" system. Now last I knew Nextel was not paying to take out the old channels and personalities. That has been a point of contention between users the TA and Nextel.

That is really an over simplified description of the overall process but it should shed a little bit of light on it.
 
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