Aurora Colorado Gives M/A-COM 30 days

[scanlist]

City of Aurora Colorado mayor Tauer gives M/A-COM 30 days to get their pro-voice system to meet city's expectations or the city will look at other options after 15 months of continual problems since the system went on the air.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/4461074/detail.html

 

[EMS12]

I know there are a lot of people who are cheerleaders for M/A-Com and Pro voice. I am not one of them


EDACS is great for urban municipalities where you can get several sites close together to get maxium saturation coverage. As many know one of the draw backs to EDACs is the control channel has to be heard clearly ALL THE TIME. In rual and mountanious areas there is simply not enough coverage and radios are dropping the control channel thus dropping the call.

The FHP in Fl has to still use its VHF freq's in areas where the EDACS control channel drops out. Rumor is there not happy with the system either. Hell in Miami Dade there are areas IN THE CITY where the control channel drops out. The City of Miami refused to implement a EDACS system opting instead to keep its Moto type II citing that EDACS has to many bugs.

Motorolla Type II systems IMO are a bit more robust and seem to have less bugs. EDACS is just to complicated. The old addage applies here KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid.

 

[SteveS]

And Moto in Philly is doing much better?

 

[EnidPuceflange]

I suspect that if you were to examine the problems that the Aurora system is running into you'd find strong evidence that Nextel was to blame - and as for Moto's II system being more robust - yeah, right.

Bottom line - Aurora's system works, has never gone down and is obviously better than the Moto system they replaced. The Moto system didn't suffer interference, because it didn't even cover those ares....

 

[chrisjz]

Out of the radio business. Deleted...

 

[SCPD]

I live in an area where both Moto. Astro and EDACS are used heavily. Both types of systems seem to have their plusses and minuses. If implemented right, they both seem to be able to work very well.

If I were to pick systems for certain applications, I think I would pick EDACS for a smaller (geographically) system, like a city public safety system and I would pick Moto. for a large wide area system.

I think Moto. can handle a large, wide area, system better than EDACS, mostly because M/A-Com hasn't done any real upgrading to their technology in this regard. I could be wrong, but that's my impression. But, on the other hand, I don't have any experience with a wide area EDACS system.

This is, of course, leaving out the whole open/closed standard, interoperability thing. The way I see it, is that a city or state should go with what works best for them and is the most cost effective (not just the cheapest though). Then work with the surrounding people to achieve interoperability. There are lots of ways to do that, not just by having everyone and their brother join a P25 trunking system like some people would have us believe.

BTW, Nextel is a problem, no doubt, thanks to the FCC, not Nextel. But they are certainly not the cause of all problems with these systems. The problems that they cause are usually VERY localized.

 

[chrisjz]

Out of the radio business. Deleted...

 

[N_Jay]

My personal belief is that since 9-11, "P25" and "interoperability" are nothing more than sales gimmicks. To me this whole thing is a load of crap. What interoperability do you have if town A has an 800 Mhz P25 trunked system and town B has a UHF P25 conventional system. The radios still can't talk to each other due to the fact that they are on separate bands and operating formats. However, Motorola and some others would have you believe that just because it's P25 that there is instant interoperability which is definitely not the case. One day everyone will wake up and smell the coffee and see they have been cheated...

Some just don't get it.

There are lots of reasons to move fro, propriatary technologies to standards basd technologies (and making it easy to scan is NOT one of them).

Interoperability has to happen at many levels. NO, the use of standard systems does not "automatically" give it to you, but it is a big help (even on different bands).

 

[MASTRTECH]

Roger That...Inter-op is crap....Rick

 

[FPO703]

Interoperability has very little to do with the radio systems. It's the training of the individuals that use the radios on a day to day basis for comms.

One that really pisses me off is when a police officer in my city wants to relay a message to the neighboring city (disabled vehicle, car wreck, etc...) they call disptch, dispatch calls the other dispatch who sends the officers to handle the situation.

Instead of the officer just flipping the channel on their radio to notify the other agency themselves.

Or, for the fire department here. we have 2 stations, one station will get on scene first, realize they don't need the other trucks and have dispatch advise the other trucks on the same channel that they're not needed. Instead of talking direct to the other trucks. How stupid.

 

[curtschmahl]

I have used the new Aurora System....and i have to tell you im not impressed, I am usually a proponent of M/A-COM, i have lots of GE/Ericsson, M/A-COM radios and i have to say the issue here is the Dead spots, and the radios splattering and digitizing. Big liability issue here! this is why when Aurora went to the new system, all of our dispatching contracts went to Adams County. Keep in mind our Dept. is small, Too small to get new radios, so we stuck with the Motorola Trunk system. More dependable IMHO