Quite contrary.As it has been for the past several years it is in the works... no real timeline yet. DTI is still working on the required templates for each service/agency - once the templates are set, they claim there will be no deviation/custom templates allowed. They claim the plan is to still start with the fire side then move to other agencies/services (who cares if the fire radios dont work, right?) So I would be surprised if the process starts before the summer, and at this stage do not think it would start in 2012, but who knows!
Sorry, I did mean Divcomm.... As for the templates, we were told the only deviation for the template in the fire service would be for the company channel, they did not say a whole zone.... if they changed this, it was recently and after being yelled at multiple times by different people (some companies have a town and or police channel as well as a company channel) ..... the whole goal was to streamline the process for them (they were having a hard enough time keeping track of the state agency templates) - -as for 2 months, they have been saying that consistantly for at least the past three years..... kinda like 2 beers (They have rarely put a date with the two months because early on when they were saying dates the dates came and went so fast they could not keep track of them!)Quite contrary.
Divcomm is handling this, not DTI. Although most of the work will be done by contractors with Divcomm supervising the process and interacting with the customer. The templates will be standard, but there is some deviation allowed. At the county chiefs meeting, it was advised each department would be allowed to customize its own zone, and that paperwork from each department was supposed to have been submitted in November I believe, I know ours was.
Word on the street from credible sources indicate that newcastle will be the first county to be programmed with the rebanding template, and that it should begin in 2 months. After that, it will be kent and then sussex.
As for fire radios being recalled, that is not possible since none of them have been programmed yet. Divcomm did have to come around and read the radio template from each department, and many had to be re-read recently due to the contractors wanting more information than was requested the first time.