I have no idea how many sites are proposed, or if other existing sites will be used and melded in at a later time. And, perhaps there will be more licenses forthcoming for additional sites. I wouldn't necessarily count on this being the only license for this buildout. I'll be on the lookout for more, or possibly for additional sites to be added to this license once at a later date, after this license is granted.
Perhaps these sites are intended to provide coverage of the eastern county in conjunction with the Beachwood site, with the possibility of merging SWRCN and the Parma P25 in as well to provide the coverage of the western part of the county along with the other existing MARCS sites?
Has anybody heard, through the media or some other grapevine, what the extent of this buildout is supposed to be as well as proposed cost? I haven't followed the happening of MARCS in NE Ohio. I wasn't aware this was even going to happen.
I've heard some details on this thing through work, but don't recall all the specifics off the top of my head. As far as cost, I know a grant was received to help pay for the thing but I don't really recall the total cost.
As far as the project scope, this is strictly my educated opinion, but I have a feeling that there is an element of "if you build it they will come" to this thing.
My folks lived in Shaker Heights for 20 years after migrating from Columbus, so I had many years to observe the phenomena known as Cuyahoga County at first hand. Historically (at least over the last 25 years or so), it seems to have been one of the most non-interoperable counties in Ohio, with one group of agencies here on low band, another group of agencies there on high band, still another group over yonder using UHF, plus several lone wolves like Cleveland flying solo. In addition, mutual aid or automatic response (at least as it's known in other areas of the state) is spotty and poorly implemented. To top it all off, it seems as though no one even
wants to talk to anyone else; each city has their own little fiefdom, and they all might as well erect customs inspection stations along their borders. The end result of all this is what amounts to no practical interoperability. What there is seems quite localized and doesn't go very far beyond the borders of a couple of groups of cities.
And so, there is probably a hope that if this thing gets built out, agencies will move to it, everybody will be interoperable and live happily every after. As if....
Unfortunately, interoperability is not only having the tools to do the job, it's also a state of mind. You have to
want to talk to the guy next door. In many cases, even when they already have the tools to do the job right now, agencies in Cuyahoga County still won't talk to each other. And if they won't talk to each other today, how is having a multi-million-dollar countywide radio system going to change anything? The mindset has got to be changed in Cuyahoga County to make this thing really work, or else all we'll have is a multi-million-dollar boondoggle.