Heaven Help us !
No doubt this is finally going to happen...seems we are destined to keep repeating our ever increasing reliance on disposable and expensive radio systems, that will probably work 90% of the time for police and ambulance but will miserably fail, particularly for the volunteer fire service. Having watch this project unfold for over 10 years, the "industry push" toward a trunked 800 mhz...now 700 mhz system has been lost on under represented volunteer firefighters who want voice paging tied to their local dispatch frequencies. My information is that YES, there will be a 3 province wide paging system for volunteers in the 3 provinces but it will bear no relationship to the operating system. Small budget local departments will be forced to migrate to the costly 700 mhz radios...which will mean rationalizing equipment due to cost.
As the end of the day, they will have no control over it, it will be very costly to purchase and use, user operability will be a big problem....and well there are those coverage issues. And just when they are getting used to these new radios...it will be determined the system is "outdated !" and around we go again.
The VHF systems in each of the provinces, that are currently used by over 90 % of the fire departments has performed admirably for 5 decades...with minimal cost, very few dark area and great paging monitoring and simplex talk around. The old adage.."if it works well and costs little....we better get rid of it and come up with a more expensive and cumbersome solution." I can well remember sitting in meetings with politicians and senior bureaucrats who would ask "Why can't they use CELL PHONES ???" That tells you the level of intellect at the decision making level ... and the vendors come in with powerful powerpoint..that talks about "Saving Lives" and the decision makers bow down....and get their picture taken !! Sad day for the fire service.
