Bergen County Police trunk

[gcr33]

a comment was pass by a motorola rep from schaumberg that Bergewn County Police was offered a astro 7 system IP radios for mid 2007 up and running, all the new freq are in place, sites are up, but failed to get all the funding needed, and that Jersey City Police in Hudson County or some other east coast agency may get the equiptment seems it takes several months to make and several months to test, so it may push back their start up to 2008?

 

[jaymatt1978]

Besides the funding problems there's a lot of internal fighting between the county and the local towns. The county is pushing a countywide dispatching system and the towns are not to happy about it. So stay tuned.

 

[xpawel15x]

Will my Pro-97 be able to monitor the new county system?

 

[ctrabs74]

Will my Pro-97 be able to monitor the new county system?

No. Bergen County's new TRS will be P-25 9600 baud digital.

 

[ctrabs74]

Besides the funding problems there's a lot of internal fighting between the county and the local towns. The county is pushing a countywide dispatching system and the towns are not to happy about it.

Maybe some of these smaller and mid-sized towns in Bergen should take a trip down to Hunterdon, Gloucester, Camden, or Burlington Counties and see the benefits of a county-wide dispatch center (though there are a couple of p/d's in Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester who still self-dispatch; all FD and EMS squads in those three counties have a county-wide dispatch operation).

I'd doubt you'll see all 70 munis in Bergen on board, but even if you get about 70-80 percent to sign on to a centralized dispatch, that's still a pretty good rate (almost all of the Pa. counties, including those outside of Philadelphia, have a county-wide dispatch center for PD/FD/EMS).

Perhaps if Corzine, or someone else with a strong backbone insists on consolidating dispatch functions in North Jersey as is the case (for the most part) in South Jersey and Northwest Jersey, you might see progress for true county-wide interoperability in Bergen. Until then, I wouldn't hold my breath...

 

[902]

Resource sharing and (shudder) centralized dispatch will have multiple positive impacts.

First would be knowing exactly how much resource is available from one central location. Bergen County has classically been 70-something small municipalities with some expectation of autonomy at great expense. Some resource sharing, or collaborative operations (agencies maintaining their independent identity, but entering into coordinated automatic response agreements) would go a long way in adapting to personnel availability and reduction of overall expense of plurality.

A common communications system would also be spectrum efficient, where, instead of each venue and discipline requiring their own frequencies and base stations, the common infrastructure could accommodate all operations, as well as 'interoperability' needs.

 

[xpawel15x]

No. Bergen County's new TRS will be P-25 9600 baud digital.

Does Pro-96 receive this?

 

[W2SJW]

Yes, your '96 will receive the system.

I mentioned in a previous post here on RR that JC will probably be 3Q-4Q '07, and that we should expect to see Bayonne come online with their P25 7x system by the end of 2Q '07.

Gonna be some interesting scanning possibilities coming this year in north Jersey!

 

[comsec1]

bidding

would'nt this system have to be spec'd out and put out to bid. how could motorola "offer" a system like that.
hav'nt the techs warned the towns about trunked radio systems. trunked radio systems and public safty do not mix well.
trunked radio systems are designed with spectrum efficency as the number one priority and not system reliablity. and in todays times interoperabilty is all but lost when you go to a "system" no matter who the manufactor is.
factor in the cost of maintaining a trunked system and the towns will certainly not go for it.
and than thers the question of who is going to manage the system and decide who gets what features. when every town demands to have phone interconnect for all users whos going to tell then they can't.
and the biggest problem with trunked systems is that when the stuff hits the fan and everytown responds to a staging area and the system loading crashes the system as anyone who works on a trunk system will tell you will happen how will all the "busys" be explained to all the towns who are paying to be on the system.
just some thoughts.

thanks

 

[902]

would'nt this system have to be spec'd out and put out to bid. how could motorola "offer" a system like that.
hav'nt the techs warned the towns about trunked radio systems. trunked radio systems and public safty do not mix well.

Whoa!

I would hope a professional would prepare a standards-based specification. You don't buy these things off the shelf. I also hope that no company ever feels like it has an 'in the bag' deal. With the advent of the P25 standard, there are a number of manufacturers that can build elements of a system up to the entire system, itself. There's a new one starting up in the US - EADS (they're big elsewhere around the world - no, I don't work for them).

As for the second part of that statement, I'd have to disagree. That may have been the case in 1984 when trunking meant one site with five channels and a PrivacyPlus, GE-STAR or LTR controller, but the technology has evolved tremendously further where that opinion requires serious reevaluation today.

Anyway, the teeter-tottering condition of individual radio systems I've been reading about here seems to be probably the biggest reason why I wouldn't take any advice from the local technicians. If they can't keep those in order, what valid voice do they have in critiquing technology they've never seen?

trunked radio systems are designed with spectrum efficency as the number one priority and not system reliablity. and in todays times interoperabilty is all but lost when you go to a "system" no matter who the manufactor is.

Again, we go back to my statement of having a professional design the system versus a committee meeting at a diner. Survivability in a public safety communications system is an engineered expectation and should not be left to happenstance.

When the designer calls for a standards-based solution that meets EIA/ TIA 102 BACC (the Inter-RF Subsystem Interface), dissimilar equipment behaves in a predictable manner because it follows the protocols defined within the standards. I've seen a P25 environment where a Motorola infrastructure worked with E.F. Johnson and M/A-Com portables. That's not really interoperability, though. Interoperability can be seamless roaming for certain talkgroups from network to network. Despite the hoopla, OPERABILITY trumps interoperability. Who gives a damn if everybody in the world can jump in if it doesn't work in a quiescent environment to begin with?

factor in the cost of maintaining a trunked system and the towns will certainly not go for it.

The fact is that EVERYONE now pays for maintaining their own conventional radio system. When the resources are aggregated and developed over the desired coverage area, you will find the sum of individual systems may be astronomical. THIS is what prevents most systems from achieving redundancy or divergency. Some entities will have requirements for additional coverage or additional capacity. On a trunked system, a new user is assigned a talkgroup and a priority, then the radios are programmed and they are up. Resources added don't benefit only one user, but the entire population as would be calculated in Erlang-B distribution.

At my job, I have 14 conventional VHF base stations, some simplex, some repeaterized, at each of five sites to service two agencies. A third agency would need to find their own COMPATIBLE frequency (impossible here for VHF), add a base at each site and possibly an antenna and feedline, and would be the sole beneficiary. With 14 base stations (that I pay maintenance for, btw), I serve only two agencies. IF I were to replace those with 8 trunked repeaters, I can service not only those two agencies, but EVERY SINGLE AGENCY in my county (which is not Bergen). And, I could so that more economically than I could service only those two agencies. If I was the administrator of the prospective system, I could defray those costs amongst all of the interested participants, guarantee a level of service and provide the 'if it doesn't work it's my problem, not yours' for less than their current costs, because of the aggregation and defrayal.

Finally, everyone with an investment in two way radio that does not have a system that conforms to 1 voice path/ 1 - 9.6k data path in a 12.5 channelspace has significant expense coming with compulsory narrowbanding in 2013.

and than thers the question of who is going to manage the system and decide who gets what features. when every town demands to have phone interconnect for all users whos going to tell then they can't.

In today's world of connectivity, with many devices doing wireless telephone so much better than semi-duplex interconnect, it's foolish to even enable an ersatz feature like interconnect. Forget it was ever a feature of trunking. Anyone who makes a 'buy or no-buy' decision on whether their patrol radios can make phone calls is an idi..., um, out of touch (or has been reading too many Morgan O'Brien position papers). I can say that the last thing I need when I'm on a roof working in a tactical situation is receiving a call from someone who is not immediately related to the mission at hand. We all need to zone in on that little thought the next time someone says some nationwide carrier will look after public safety's interests.

and the biggest problem with trunked systems is that when the stuff hits the fan and everytown responds to a staging area and the system loading crashes the system as anyone who works on a trunk system will tell you will happen how will all the "busys" be explained to all the towns who are paying to be on the system.
just some thoughts.

I actually agree with you on that! A complex system needs to be a living system that has to have priority assignment, zoned features which may partition an operational area, a strong committment to training and discipline (yes, I was born and raised in Bergen County, I can hear you lauging all the way out here, yet there has to be someone with a white shirt and gold regalia in the county who can and will hold the line when he or she has to), using transmission trunking (no hang-timer) versus message trunking, those effects are minimized. And, with aggregation of resource, you make sure surge moments are incorporated in the system archetecture. This is all about engineering.

thanks

You're welcome.