Allegany County- "Emergency communication system a cause for concern"

[ThePhotoGuy]

CUMBERLAND — A corporate takeover could force Allegany County to spend millions to purchase expensive emergency communications equipment or face a potentially disastrous inability to communicate with firefighters and rescue companies and personnel.

http://www.times-news.com/news/emer...cle_653fb4b8-bd2c-11e4-a712-43c5c1eb0219.html

 

[DisasterGuy]

In a competitive bid environment, $7m could easily replace their UHF LTR system with their own UHF P25 system with a good chunk of money left over.

 

[maus92]

I don't know if this was the case in Allegany County, but there have been instances where local telecommunications companies receive "priority" - or worse - when bids are evaluated for radio systems. The local companies propose non-standard solutions because they may not have the license / privilege to sell public safety product lines. Or they may represent that a commercial product line will suffice...

 

[badlans]

In my limited experience, you "gotta dance with the one who brung ya." In my world, that means that I would much rather acquire solutions from a local source that would be responsive and available. Nothin' sux worse than having to drive two hours to get a fuse replaced, or worse yet leave a car overnight and then turn around the next day to go get it again to find out they didn't find the original problem.

Maybe things have gotten a lot better since I was in the business, but I'd prefer local jurisdictions stick with local technology sources when it makes sense. Sure, there are a lot of bozos out there, but there are also a lot of slick sales types that storm into town and sell folks zillions of $$$ worth of gear that they can't actually use. It can be a mess.

Oh well, thanks for listening . . .