Barrow Co. upgrade. Or downgrade.

[radiofan1]

5 million dollars later, Barrow's VHF P25 is a piece of junk. Nobody is happy. Ok?

So the first thing said is that motorola will swap it out even steven. Ok?

Now the grapevine has it that the county will fork out ANOTHER 4 million dollars to change to 700/800. Adding ONE tower site.

So at the end of the day, Barrow will have a state of the art 9 million dollar 4 site system that will work like crap. Because 700/800 works so well in hilly areas, y'all. 9 million bucks. 4 sites. A dollar will getcha a donut that there's AES boards in that quote, because, ya know, Barrow NEEDS encryption, ya know.

I think it's safe to say Barrow swallowed this one hook, line, sinker, leader, line, pole, and fisherman? Especially the motorola fisherman's...well, I can't say that.

 

[MTS2000des]

Rumors are true. Barrow is replacing their barely 2 year old VHF Astro 25 system because it doesn't work. In their case, they IGNORED the recommendation of the original consulting firm (EA) and shot their wad on something that does not work coverage wise. They KNEW they were only getting mobile coverage when they needed portable coverage. They blame "VHS" (no joke watch their meetings) for it's poor in building penetration (which is true) and co-channel interference from Clayton county (who now has abandoned those VHF channels for the greener pastures of their encrypted 700MHz Astro 25 7.14 phase 2 DTRS).

Bottom line is they clearly did NOT do thorough body worn/in building coverage tests before go live and someone just signed off on acceptance. I have heard that those responsible are gone and left a mess for the next one. No doubt counting their payola somewhere in the mountains of NC or the like which is usually the case.

So what do their bright minds do? They fire the original consultant, pay $80,000 to a new consultant who tells them "oh, you bought the wrong stuff" (incidentally, the original consultant already advised them of this).

Yes, the vendor is going to sell them all new GTR8000s on 700/800, swap out all antennas, combiners, multi-couplers, add a new site AND replace all VHF subscriber equipment, supposedly at a "great deal"...yeah right. The only thing they get to keep are the zone core and non-RF specific components (MGEGs, consoles, CAD, etc). The zone core is one of the costliest parts of an Astro 25 network but when you have to re-build all of your sites and replace ALL of your subscriber hardware it pales in comparison.

But where were any of you folks now back in 2011/2012 when this first project was put out for public comment? Now it's a little late in the game to do anything but BOHICA.

 

[rapidcharger]

5 million dollars later, Barrow's VHF P25 is a piece of junk. Nobody is happy. Ok?

So the first thing said is that motorola will swap it out even steven. Ok?

Now the grapevine has it that the county will fork out ANOTHER 4 million dollars to change to 700/800. Adding ONE tower site.

So at the end of the day, Barrow will have a state of the art 9 million dollar 4 site system that will work like crap. Because 700/800 works so well in hilly areas, y'all. 9 million bucks. 4 sites. A dollar will getcha a donut that there's AES boards in that quote, because, ya know, Barrow NEEDS encryption, ya know.

I think it's safe to say Barrow swallowed this one hook, line, sinker, leader, line, pole, and fisherman? Especially the motorola fisherman's...well, I can't say that.

Great points. Do you live in Barrow and if so, did you attend any of the public meetings or reach out to the decision makers?

I would point out that this mistake is not unique to barrow county GA. It's happening all over the country. It's what happens when people who don't know what they're buying and don't really care to learn about it, buy an unnecessarily complicated communications network. Sometimes they end up buying two or three of them. The military industrial complex is alive and well on main street.

 

[radiofan1]

I never knew anything about it until it was under construction.

 

[1268]

yes I knew about the first system before they put it in. It was a cluster from Day 1 :evil:

Fact : They had an offer to join the Hall county 800mnz system. Declined

Fact: Had a chance to join the Jackson 400 mhz turbo system Declined

Fact : Barrow was told by many many other counties that the VHF system would have issues without more towers etc. They were specifically were told that if they used encryption on law enforcement channels it would have portable issues. Barrow didn't care and moved forward.

Fact : Both Kenwood and Harris ( Tyco at that time) couldn't get the time of day in Barrow. They dealt with 1 vendor the whole time. Still are

This deal stinks all the way. But as was stated above it's ongoing throughout the SE and country. The taxpayers are getting fleeced along the way