When the system was first announced, the only costs to be borne by the departments was for radio hardware (mobiles and portables). The province was picking up the tab for the cost of the towers, radio infrastructure and linking, etc.
Personally, when you weigh the costs of:
Own Radio System
- towers (and/or leasing the land thereof)
- repeater/infrastructure equipment
- license costs for the frequency(ies)
- repeat above 3 items x however many towers/freqs/etc you have/want
- end user radio equipment
versus
AFRRCS (my guess)
- licensing costs for the specific block of frequencies for the trunk system
- end user radio equipment
I think I can convince my town to favor door number two.
The only real concern I have with this setup is personnel alerting. Many (most) rural/volunteer departments use voice pagers to alert their members. I haven't seen any solution in the info I've seen for AFRRCS. IMO, it is technically possible to select-call individual (or groups of) radios, duplicating the functionality of a pager receiver/alert monitor with a full P25 radio. However, I don't think all departments are going to be in the financial ballpark of outfitting every member with a personal P25 radio. I still know of some departments that have only a small handful of portables (less than 5) which stay at the station and are used on the truck, instead of issued to members.
Rescue54, I would look hard at grant money if I were you. AFAIK, there are tons of places trying desperately to hemorrhage grant money left and right. See if you can get a couple portables a year for the next few years, or get really lucky and get someone to give you a dozen or so. Also, it would behoove you to install trunking radios in your trucks now, one or two at a time, rather than waiting and getting them all at once. Over the past few years, we have put XTL5000 mobiles in each of Redwood's new trucks, and have only two left to do at this point (out of six trucks). The XTL is a 700/800 P25 compatible radio and is currently programmed up for Calgary's 800 Smartzone system. When AFRRCS comes alive, it will take a quick reprogramming (and maybe a flash upgrade) to make them work on that system.
Personally, when you weigh the costs of:
Own Radio System
- towers (and/or leasing the land thereof)
- repeater/infrastructure equipment
- license costs for the frequency(ies)
- repeat above 3 items x however many towers/freqs/etc you have/want
- end user radio equipment
versus
AFRRCS (my guess)
- licensing costs for the specific block of frequencies for the trunk system
- end user radio equipment
I think I can convince my town to favor door number two.
The only real concern I have with this setup is personnel alerting. Many (most) rural/volunteer departments use voice pagers to alert their members. I haven't seen any solution in the info I've seen for AFRRCS. IMO, it is technically possible to select-call individual (or groups of) radios, duplicating the functionality of a pager receiver/alert monitor with a full P25 radio. However, I don't think all departments are going to be in the financial ballpark of outfitting every member with a personal P25 radio. I still know of some departments that have only a small handful of portables (less than 5) which stay at the station and are used on the truck, instead of issued to members.
Rescue54, I would look hard at grant money if I were you. AFAIK, there are tons of places trying desperately to hemorrhage grant money left and right. See if you can get a couple portables a year for the next few years, or get really lucky and get someone to give you a dozen or so. Also, it would behoove you to install trunking radios in your trucks now, one or two at a time, rather than waiting and getting them all at once. Over the past few years, we have put XTL5000 mobiles in each of Redwood's new trucks, and have only two left to do at this point (out of six trucks). The XTL is a 700/800 P25 compatible radio and is currently programmed up for Calgary's 800 Smartzone system. When AFRRCS comes alive, it will take a quick reprogramming (and maybe a flash upgrade) to make them work on that system.
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