Lexington County Pager upgrades

Status
Not open for further replies.

brian

DB Administrator
Database Admin
Joined
Dec 10, 2000
Messages
2,055
Location
South Carolina
Narrowbanding of VHF tone-out frequencies would be my guess. Maybe they're using older minitors that don't support narrowbanding?

In this day and age with mobile phone and data devices, I'm surprised more agenies don't shift more toward CAD systems that support email and text alerts. I know that is used in Spartanburg, as a supplement to standard tone-outs. I guess you have to plan for the situation of mobile data networks being down or unreliable, but that's a lot of cash for tone-alert devices.
 

Caesar

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Apr 11, 2005
Messages
266
Location
Lexington, SC
Narrowbanding of VHF tone-out frequencies would be my guess. Maybe they're using older minitors that don't support narrowbanding?

In this day and age with mobile phone and data devices, I'm surprised more agenies don't shift more toward CAD systems that support email and text alerts. I know that is used in Spartanburg, as a supplement to standard tone-outs. I guess you have to plan for the situation of mobile data networks being down or unreliable, but that's a lot of cash for tone-alert devices.

I believe Brian is correct, the last deadline i heard for NFM was 2013
 

qball

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Dec 19, 2002
Messages
247
Location
Home of mustard-based barbecue
Narrowbanding of VHF tone-out frequencies would be my guess. Maybe they're using older minitors that don't support narrowbanding?

In this day and age with mobile phone and data devices, I'm surprised more agenies don't shift more toward CAD systems that support email and text alerts. I know that is used in Spartanburg, as a supplement to standard tone-outs. I guess you have to plan for the situation of mobile data networks being down or unreliable, but that's a lot of cash for tone-alert devices.

Brian,

Many agencies use text and email as an alerting method. However, NFPA requirements limit what you can do over a commercial service because you have no control over message delivery times and general service reliability. Have you ever sent someone a text message and they received it two days later?

I believe it is NFPA 1221 that outlines all of the alerting requirements...

On more than one occasion, I know that the former ALLTEL shut down their SMS email gateway because they were be overwhelmed with SPAM. No way in for SPAM, and no way in for CAD messages.

It's a great idea if it were just more reliable. Just my $.02.
 

davidgcet

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Aug 17, 2010
Messages
1,321
well, they are talking about adding sites to the existing system, so that is a good portion of the cost. you have the link to the site(Microwave/other rf, T-1, analog leased lines,etc), the transmitters themselves, teh feedlines and antennas, then labor. some of the council wants to upgrade to full county coverage during this conversion, and that is never cheap. if they are going to use a single freq/frequency pair so that users don't have to change channels when in another area, then the sites will require simulcasting and thus GPS(which can run 30-50k per site), voters, etc.. it adds up quickly!

they said 700k for pagers for 380 folks, that a hair under 500 per so that is inline with Minitor V pagers.
 

Caesar

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Apr 11, 2005
Messages
266
Location
Lexington, SC
well, they are talking about adding sites to the existing system, so that is a good portion of the cost. you have the link to the site(Microwave/other rf, T-1, analog leased lines,etc), the transmitters themselves, teh feedlines and antennas, then labor. some of the council wants to upgrade to full county coverage during this conversion, and that is never cheap. if they are going to use a single freq/frequency pair so that users don't have to change channels when in another area, then the sites will require simulcasting and thus GPS(which can run 30-50k per site), voters, etc.. it adds up quickly!

they said 700k for pagers for 380 folks, that a hair under 500 per so that is inline with Minitor V pagers.

They just need a 1800ft Tower with 1kw output and it will be County Wide paging :)
 

davidgcet

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Aug 17, 2010
Messages
1,321
true, but unfortunately the FCC would never approve that on VHF!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top