I'm not pointing fingers but a lot of departments are under the impression that they have to go digital in order to be narrow band compliant and that is not correct. You can be analog and be narrow band. also I hope these radios can in fact be digital dispatch wise and analog on fireground. Digital had a lot of issues a while back because of all the noise from equipment, etc. Hopefully that's been fixed. There have been problems with digital radio and fire service compatibilities for while. This was out there from a few years ago
Radio woes: Digital radio problems surface in last week’s mayday in Cincinnati. Newspaper looks at the issue. | STATter911.com some more here
Digital Radio Problems | Daryl Jones' Weblog and some more
http://www.usfa.fema.gov/pdf/efop/efo42139.pdf. As long as they can fix the issues so be it, but until it does get fixed, why put peoples lives at greater risk than they already are.
Just about all of these issues has been addressed in new vocoder implementation and DSP algorithms in transceivers. The unfortunate thing is that, like trunking was 15 years ago, the sea monster stories from the pioneering days continue to propagate. Even young people on the job who have never encountered these failures first-hand can recite the sea monster stories as though they were gospel. I know a lot of people who are in major city fire departments who are working first-hand with manufacturers, testing labs, and researchers to insure communications issues are minimized on the fireground. People might not be aware, but there are several forums where manufacturers even sit down with each other to work through common feature sets.
Some of the things I'm aware of: some manufacturers have noise cancellation algorithms independent of the vocoder. The new versions of the vocoders (second generation AMBE) are optimized to deal with a high noise environment. Programming with inhibit on proper NAC code greatly reduces (but cannot eliminate) the possibility of destructive "doubling" (two people keying up at the same time). This might conflict with some legacy use. Some fire departments used one frequency for fireground operations and depended on the FM capture effect to talk to the closest people.
Unfortunately, some manufacturers are only putting this into their top shelf products. This is where the homework needs to be done. That's fine. Others are putting them in their complete product lines. We can't be single-manufacturer-centric anymore. Awareness is one's friend. Part of the homework is to get demonstration devices from each manufacturer and put them out into the street or at the training center so that the people who are using them get to weigh in on how well they will work for them.
And, everyone is correct, there is *NO* mandate to go digital when one narrowbands (which should have happened already, but...). However, some digital formats can recover range and provide enhanced features that the initial system might not have had.
Closing thought (and this is not a slam on Schuykill County, but on grants in general) - our services have to get out of the "grants mentality." Local services have to shift into planning and budgeting so that things can stay maintained and operational, as opposed to fall into disrepair or decay because there is no grant funded sustainment to operate the program they couldn't afford to initiate on their own. When a grant comes along, there are any number of interests lining up for the money as though it were Pez. It brings out the worst in both recipients and vendors, and "it's not my money" (yeah, right). Communications is a core sustaining element of emergency services and needs to be budgeted as much as new vehicles or other equipment.