Transition to Phase 2 Any Time Soon?

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fyrfyter33

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If it's not free for MARCS users, which nothing from Motorola ever is, it isn't coming, plain and simple. My county just spent $20M moving to MARCS. Their part will have to last at least 15 years, before they will consider a replacement. Seeing the number of existing XTS5000s still in field use, even past EOL and eliminating parts availability next year, unless someone has a ton of money to replace those, it isn't going to happen.

Nobody has the funding in place to replace all of those. The regional grant won't consider the submission before 2018, because our XTS aren't 15 years old yet. This is a dollars and sense thing. Without the money to upgrade the end user hardware, there's no point in wasting it on upgrading the system with junk nobody can use.
 

budevans

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Digital voice works just fine on 6.25KHz channels... a friend and I use NXDN very narrow(6.25KHz channel) simplex. Works great, sounds as good, or better than, DMR. It uses the same vocoder as both DMR and P25 Phase 2.

kayn1n32008,

You are correct you can design a system to run at 6.25. I should have said moving to 6.25 from 12.5 or 25 won't provide the same coverage.

MARCS sites were designed, tested and deployed to run at a specific bandwidth. Cutting the bandwidth in 1/2 would cause coverage problems and require expensive infrastructure build out to resolve it. I really doubt that's going to happen.
 

budevans

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If it's not free for MARCS users, which nothing from Motorola ever is, it isn't coming, plain and simple. My county just spent $20M moving to MARCS. Their part will have to last at least 15 years, before they will consider a replacement. Seeing the number of existing XTS5000s still in field use, even past EOL and eliminating parts availability next year, unless someone has a ton of money to replace those, it isn't going to happen.

Nobody has the funding in place to replace all of those. The regional grant won't consider the submission before 2018, because our XTS aren't 15 years old yet. This is a dollars and sense thing. Without the money to upgrade the end user hardware, there's no point in wasting it on upgrading the system with junk nobody can use.

Do you seriously think that OSP sold off working XTS radio's and bought new APX just to give their officers shiny new radio's?

Just because the infrastructure is upgraded with the capability to do both Phase I and Phase II, doesn't mean users have to buy all new radio's to do Phase II. No one is being forced to move to Phase II, with the current and up coming infrastructure updates. These (infrastructure) updates/upgrades have already been budgeted.

I would think a counties Partner relationship with MARCS comes into play.

Note, there is a (some what) similar discussion going on in the Summit 800 System forum. One of the possible issues mentioned is regarding the counties Gold Elite consoles which are currently supported for P25. The county is planning on replacing the consoles in 2018. But a system upgrade to release 7.17 is planned for 2017. Release 7.17 drops the Gold Elite consoles support. It's something Summit is looking into.
 

n8dhw

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If it's not free for MARCS users, which nothing from Motorola ever is, it isn't coming, plain and simple. My county just spent $20M moving to MARCS. Their part will have to last at least 15 years, before they will consider a replacement. Seeing the number of existing XTS5000s still in field use, even past EOL and eliminating parts availability next year, unless someone has a ton of money to replace those, it isn't going to happen.

Nobody has the funding in place to replace all of those. The regional grant won't consider the submission before 2018, because our XTS aren't 15 years old yet. This is a dollars and sense thing. Without the money to upgrade the end user hardware, there's no point in wasting it on upgrading the system with junk nobody can use.



Butler County is in the same boat so to speak. All the Public Safety agencies are still using XTS5000's which were bought by the County in a bulk purchase around 2008 when there original system came on the air before there integration with MARCS.

But according to there maintenance schedule there not scheduled to start replacing radios till 2017 and will take at least 5 years or longer to replace all Public Saftey radios. So I don't see Butler County changing anything on there end anytime soon.


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kayn1n32008

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kayn1n32008,

You are correct you can design a system to run at 6.25. I should have said moving to 6.25 from 12.5 or 25 won't provide the same coverage.

MARCS sites were designed, tested and deployed to run at a specific bandwidth. Cutting the bandwidth in 1/2 would cause coverage problems and require expensive infrastructure build out to resolve it. I really doubt that's going to happen.
Actually, going from 25KHz to 6.25KHz will likely see some coverage improvement. Well 6.25Khz Equivilant any how.
 

fyrfyter33

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Butler County is in the same boat so to speak. All the Public Safety agencies are still using XTS5000's which were bought by the County in a bulk purchase around 2008 when there original system came on the air before there integration with MARCS.

But according to there maintenance schedule there not scheduled to start replacing radios till 2017 and will take at least 5 years or longer to replace all Public Saftey radios. So I don't see Butler County changing anything on there end anytime soon.


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Yup. We are in Hamilton County, so similar. We don't pay to be on MARCS, since the City & County systems joining, gave the system a much better coverage area in far SW OH.

I don't see it happening around here. Way too many XTSs still in service that won't support it, and with the regional grant not available for a couple more years, it will be awhile before most of the fire departments have APX radios and capability for Phase II. Nobody is even close to having it on mobiles, since most are still using the original Spectra+ mobiles.
 

mszabo2000

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The only reason to add TDMA is if you have a capacity issue that can't be resolved by adding channels to a site. The system can support both FDMA and TDMA radios simultaneously.
 

kayn1n32008

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The only reason to add TDMA is if you have a capacity issue that can't be resolved by adding channels to a site. The system can support both FDMA and TDMA radios simultaneously.

Or there are no frequencies available

Either way, using TDMA is more efficient spectrum wise.

By going from FDMA(F-1=Vp)to FDMA&TDMA you double the available voice paths(2F-2= Vp)

A 10 channel site has 9 voice paths, by changing to TDMA, you get 18 voice paths for the same channel count.

It is likely less expensive to go to TDMA, if the subscribers and infrastructure are already TDMA capable, than to add frequencies to increase voice capacity.
 

mszabo2000

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Or there are no frequencies available

Either way, using TDMA is more efficient spectrum wise.

By going from FDMA(F-1=Vp)to FDMA&TDMA you double the available voice paths(2F-2= Vp)

A 10 channel site has 9 voice paths, by changing to TDMA, you get 18 voice paths for the same channel count.

It is likely less expensive to go to TDMA, if the subscribers and infrastructure are already TDMA capable, than to add frequencies to increase voice capacity.

Your statement is accurate. My point is the move to TDMA is driven by supply and demand. If the demand for voice or data channels exceeds the current channel capacity of a site and no additional channels can be added to the site, then it makes sense to add TDMA to the site. To add TDMA to a system just for the sake of having a TDMA system doesn't make sense.
 

krazybob

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That is not entirely true. One reason to move to TDMA is not just the doubling of channels did very well may use one for voice and the other for data, but the audio quality is superior to P25. If an agency is expanding their system that's currently utilizing less channels there's another reason to go to mototrbo. Or NXDN for that matter. If you happen to live in an area where amateur radio is taking advantage of mototrbo there's another reason to upgrade your scanner. My amateur repeaters are in the process of just that. I don't expect to listen to mine on a scanner but others might.

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