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This may be of interest to those that need to understand long term Starcom21 costs.
Illinois STARCOM21 Sole Source Debacle | Daryl Jones' Weblog
Illinois STARCOM21 Sole Source Debacle | Daryl Jones' Weblog
STARCOM21 Costs
- Thread starter RADIOUSER5
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I can't see the payback.
I just spent a couple of hours creating a spreadsheet comparing our very functional county-wide existing (and paid for) stupid old VHF analog system versus switching 300+ radios over to Starcom.
Non-technical and budget-blind bureaucrats just don't get it that there isn't one universally perfect radio medium. Its like having the entire fire department argue and vote on whether a 114.8 CTCSS code is better than a 103.5 CTCSS code when there is no operational advantage to either one. (And yes, I have witnessed that very argument.)
Pre-planning and ACU's are cheap compared to spending millions for an event that might happen once in 5 years, and they work.
Cost per unit. If you add up all the replacement, repair and preventive maintenance costs for our existing portable/mobile radios and infrastructure system, it works out to about $165/radio/year, for all radios county-wide. Dumping our old analog radios and replacing them with genuine Mother radios amortized over 5 years, using only genuine Mother replacement parts, and paying Mother's $53/Mo/Radio fee works out to over $1,800/radio/year. (Daryl Jones says over $2,000/radio/year.) When Mother gets their new over $70/mo/radio user fee that's part of their non-bid contract, that figure goes up. I can buy THREE mid- or high-tier analog portables a year for the same money, and throw them away when they get dirty. IF this were a genuine open-system and other vendor's trunking P25 equipment could be used on the Starcom system (and still using the higher monthly fee), I come up with about $1,350/mo/radio. Mother pays lip service to "evaluating" other equipment for use, but in reality it will never happen. Allowing that to happen could save us taxpayers $5-10 million a year, but those savings would come right off Mother's bottom line, so it won't fly. That proves that the "economy of scale" dream is just a dream.
Paying for new radios. DHS is only putting grant money into statewide planning and metro areas. We're a 17,000 population rural county. With the exception of AFG regional grants (which haven't been going for over $300K) I see about $250K annually or $1.25M over 5 years to be made up out of the local budget. The country is broke. Illinois is really broke. We don't have it locally, and are unlikely to get it.
Coverage. Better in some areas, worse in others. We already have a multi-site voted 3-channel VHF system. 7/800MHz doesn't like hills and foliage, and that's about all we have (We have 95% regional VHF portable to base/repeater coverage now, and Mother has 9 towers - yes, 9 - that cover the high spots in our 800 square mile corner of the world.)
Ease of use. A 16-channel analog radio is really pretty simple to use, and most of the time 12 of those channels are never used. Trunking adds major points of failure, and Digital operations have their own quirks. I have end users complaining now that 2 or 3 channels are too confusing for responders- I can't wait to have them use a complex multi-banked trunking radio at one of the 5 structure fires they have a year.
Interoperability. 95% of our communications stay within a single agency, or are joint fire/EMS incidents. We are presently 100% interoperable on analog VHF with all of our neighbors, including the adjoining state. IREACH, MABAS and V-TAC channels are universally deployed and used for tactical interoperability. IREACH is an option, but now resembles the old low-band 39.5MHz sheriff's channel with noise and confusion, and it only gets monitored when users are reminded. Because they are almost strictly Starcom, we have serious problems communicating with ISP; Troopers have difficulty talking directly to our 911 dispatchers. Troopers and local law enforcement almost always communicate via cell phone or have our Dispatchers make a telephone call to the ISP dispatchers and relay information. Non law enforcement folks aren't allowed to talk on ISPERN.
Major incident communications. If we have "the big one" and have to talk to a handful of outside agencies, they can use some our cached radios, get IEMA or Wildland radios, put our stupid old analog frequencies in their VHF radios (IF they are still allowed to have them) , or put up a bridge.
Broadband and other super-technology. Our population density is about 24 people per square mile. Wire telephone and cable companies are loosing their collective rears. We only have adequate cell coverage because we're close to major highways. I expect we will rank right up there for getting universal high-speed public safety access.
The future? 20 years from now, stupid old analog radios will still be available, and inexpensive for a rural fire department with a grand total of $18,000 as their annual budget. P25? Its already outdated and non-standardized. The FCC Chairman isn't an optimist. Only a small handful of existing P25 radios can be updated to anything new, if that. Today's new P25 phase 1 radios can't be updated to phase 2, if and when its ever standardized. Something substantially better will come along every 3 or 4 years. A 10-year technology commitment is a joke- just look at the computer you're reading this on and compare it to what was available in 2001.
We can't be the only Illinois region in this situation.
I just spent a couple of hours creating a spreadsheet comparing our very functional county-wide existing (and paid for) stupid old VHF analog system versus switching 300+ radios over to Starcom.
Non-technical and budget-blind bureaucrats just don't get it that there isn't one universally perfect radio medium. Its like having the entire fire department argue and vote on whether a 114.8 CTCSS code is better than a 103.5 CTCSS code when there is no operational advantage to either one. (And yes, I have witnessed that very argument.)
Pre-planning and ACU's are cheap compared to spending millions for an event that might happen once in 5 years, and they work.
Cost per unit. If you add up all the replacement, repair and preventive maintenance costs for our existing portable/mobile radios and infrastructure system, it works out to about $165/radio/year, for all radios county-wide. Dumping our old analog radios and replacing them with genuine Mother radios amortized over 5 years, using only genuine Mother replacement parts, and paying Mother's $53/Mo/Radio fee works out to over $1,800/radio/year. (Daryl Jones says over $2,000/radio/year.) When Mother gets their new over $70/mo/radio user fee that's part of their non-bid contract, that figure goes up. I can buy THREE mid- or high-tier analog portables a year for the same money, and throw them away when they get dirty. IF this were a genuine open-system and other vendor's trunking P25 equipment could be used on the Starcom system (and still using the higher monthly fee), I come up with about $1,350/mo/radio. Mother pays lip service to "evaluating" other equipment for use, but in reality it will never happen. Allowing that to happen could save us taxpayers $5-10 million a year, but those savings would come right off Mother's bottom line, so it won't fly. That proves that the "economy of scale" dream is just a dream.
Paying for new radios. DHS is only putting grant money into statewide planning and metro areas. We're a 17,000 population rural county. With the exception of AFG regional grants (which haven't been going for over $300K) I see about $250K annually or $1.25M over 5 years to be made up out of the local budget. The country is broke. Illinois is really broke. We don't have it locally, and are unlikely to get it.
Coverage. Better in some areas, worse in others. We already have a multi-site voted 3-channel VHF system. 7/800MHz doesn't like hills and foliage, and that's about all we have (We have 95% regional VHF portable to base/repeater coverage now, and Mother has 9 towers - yes, 9 - that cover the high spots in our 800 square mile corner of the world.)
Ease of use. A 16-channel analog radio is really pretty simple to use, and most of the time 12 of those channels are never used. Trunking adds major points of failure, and Digital operations have their own quirks. I have end users complaining now that 2 or 3 channels are too confusing for responders- I can't wait to have them use a complex multi-banked trunking radio at one of the 5 structure fires they have a year.
Interoperability. 95% of our communications stay within a single agency, or are joint fire/EMS incidents. We are presently 100% interoperable on analog VHF with all of our neighbors, including the adjoining state. IREACH, MABAS and V-TAC channels are universally deployed and used for tactical interoperability. IREACH is an option, but now resembles the old low-band 39.5MHz sheriff's channel with noise and confusion, and it only gets monitored when users are reminded. Because they are almost strictly Starcom, we have serious problems communicating with ISP; Troopers have difficulty talking directly to our 911 dispatchers. Troopers and local law enforcement almost always communicate via cell phone or have our Dispatchers make a telephone call to the ISP dispatchers and relay information. Non law enforcement folks aren't allowed to talk on ISPERN.
Major incident communications. If we have "the big one" and have to talk to a handful of outside agencies, they can use some our cached radios, get IEMA or Wildland radios, put our stupid old analog frequencies in their VHF radios (IF they are still allowed to have them) , or put up a bridge.
Broadband and other super-technology. Our population density is about 24 people per square mile. Wire telephone and cable companies are loosing their collective rears. We only have adequate cell coverage because we're close to major highways. I expect we will rank right up there for getting universal high-speed public safety access.
The future? 20 years from now, stupid old analog radios will still be available, and inexpensive for a rural fire department with a grand total of $18,000 as their annual budget. P25? Its already outdated and non-standardized. The FCC Chairman isn't an optimist. Only a small handful of existing P25 radios can be updated to anything new, if that. Today's new P25 phase 1 radios can't be updated to phase 2, if and when its ever standardized. Something substantially better will come along every 3 or 4 years. A 10-year technology commitment is a joke- just look at the computer you're reading this on and compare it to what was available in 2001.
We can't be the only Illinois region in this situation.
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