Overheard in a police station (interpolability woes)
A bit of background: I live in Connecticut. My town is transitioning to an P25 system but seems to still be analog (non-trunked) most of the time. The town next door is 100% P25. There's a whole bunch of analog trunked still around of varying formats. They are mostly on the lower frequencies but a few use 800mhz. New Haven is in the middle of transition. I believe a few use some legacy stuff like EDACS and there's definitely ASTRO in use. Many places use digital/trunked for general stuff but also have analog for other stuff because this allows volenteer firefighters and such to get it on regular old scanners.
This past week I happened to find myself spending a few hours in the state police station one night. (No no. Nothing bad on my part. A good friend of mine had gotten into a car accident and was there to make a report. I was her ride and the time it took to get the appropriate officer to sit down and take all the statements was a rather long long time.)
Well I happened to hear a couple of state troopers who were sitting in the dispatch room (behind a thin piece of glass with a speaking hole in it) talking about their radios. I will paraphrase and throw in a few quotes I can rememeber but it went something like this:
"Yeah, the new car ones are supposed to work with branford and clinton, but the portables you can't do that"
"I've never been able to get branford to work"
"No I don't know. You can't talk to them. They said you would be able to. They can from dispatch though and from the van, but I don't think the dash units will do that"
"I don't know what they've got over there, but it's the same with Middletown. They say it's compatible but I think it's their security"
"They said the new system was going to fix that. Sure as hell doesn't seem any better"
"I don't even bother. I just call them on my phone if I need to"
"I do the same. It's just easier."
"Well if you need to get one of the locals you can usually do it on analog"
"Yeah, you usually can, but you'll get dispatch most of the time."
"It's not even worth trying on the belt units"
"Weren't they supposed to get new ones out here some time this year?"
"That's what I heard, but I don't even think they have all the dash units upgraded yet."
Okay basically there is some paraphrasing and filling in the gaps here, but it amounted to two or three cops talking for about 20 minutes about how much they use their cell phones because when they have to talk to non state police or other emergency services they can't seem to rely on the system. There's supposedly an interpolability gateway system. I guess it's less than ideal...
Oh great... At least we're not the only ones having issues dealing with all the formats out there now :-P
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