The figures I took are from news articles in the Reading newspaper. They should have explained the costs as you have in your reply. Many of the articles in the Reading newspaper led many people to believe that the County had no choice but to go to this new trunking system as in many of their articles they stated the FCC mandated the County had to move to this new system which wasn't true. You also stated in a Reading newspaper article that by narrowbanding, the radio signal doesn't travel as far as a regular bandwith FM signal. I co-host an amateur military radio net Sunday evenings at 1830 local in the 6 meter ham band. We have a couple of police officers that use surplus military radios which use a much wider bandwith than amateur and commercial FM radios. When I switch between narrow and regular bandwith in talking to the guys with the military gear, the strength of the signal doesn't change, the audio of the received signal drops a bit, so they just turn the volume up. However, when comparing an analog signal to a digital signal of the same frequency and power, the digital signal will not travel as far as the analog signal. I hope for safetys sake we don't have firemen in a burning building that don't receive the digital signal as with what happened in the City of Reading which is why they changed back to the analog mode on the fire talkgroups.
Mr. Kramer, I appreciate the cause of the confusion. I don't know if you ever get the pleasure of dealing with the media in your professional world, but I can tell you it is not easy. They have a hard enough job trying to get the facts of ANY story right when they have to condense it to X number of column inches. This is even more so when they are writing about a highly technical issue about which the reporter has absolutely no knowledge.
We have a good relationship with most of the folks who have tried to write on this topic over the years but frankly there is only one Reading Eagle article that I consider to be generally technically accurate (and even it has some inconsistencies). That piece is an article written by Greta Cuyler. She spent almost 4 hours in my office asking questions and looking at exhibits to write that piece.
I do not agree with your assessment of wide versus narrow simulcast prop, nor with your assessment of digital versus analog. On the wide vs. narrow issue it sounds like you are basing your position on experience in dealing with a single source transmitter and not a simulcast system. However, again, I support your right to have your opinion in these regards.
I will tell you that your statement about Reading fire moving back to analog modulation is not accurate. Their move had nothing to do with prop. It was because when they deployed their system they had a great deal of difficulty dealing with the audio retransmission that you get in digital. Traditionally the FD have external speakers on their trucks that are set to radio rebroadcast and if you have ever been on a fire scene in Reading you know that they run these speakers very loud. So loud that if you live within a block of the fire scene you don't need a scanner to know what is going on. This, coupled with a software problem in the radios that were deployed in their last iteration, resulted in them having both digital decode issues (a technical issue) and audio retransmission or feedback loop issues (an operational/procedural problem). For these reasons, they elected to move back to analog.
Extensive testing we have done with the current generation vocoder tell me that the digital noise issue is licked and audio reproduction, even in noisy environments, is stellar.
Audio looping is still a concern but people need to manage this through proper operational procedures. There is no need for everyone to run around with their speaker mics at top volume so they represent a source of secondary audio. The City, understanding the cause of their prior issue, has decided to NOT deploy external speakers on their trucks in the new system (also assisting them I addressing some other procedural problems like the family [and the rest of the neighborhood] hearing over the radio about fatalities or injuries at a scene before they can be addressed properly). This feedback looping is not something new, it is no different than the analog whine we get today when a speaker and mic are in too close proximity. It is simply a different manifestation of the same problem. It will take time and training, and people will be frustrated at first, and then they will learn to work through it.
With respect to "safety's sake" and firemen in buildings not receiving a signal, let me dash your hopes right now. There will be MANY buildings in which a fireman, or any other operator, will not receive a signal. That will be MANY less buildings than we have that problem in today though. I am not sure you understand how abysmal our radio prop is today, as it seems like you think we could possibly have worse coverage in the new system. Do you believe that the City's current system functions everywhere? It doesn't. That said, the City has better coverage density than anywhere else where we have responders having to go back to the apparatus to make transmissions from mobile. There will be locations where simplex tactical operation is necessary and the users will need to learn these areas like they know where their "dead spots" are today.
I assure you if nothing works as planned, and all the promise of this new platform falls through, our prop will still be better than it is today.
We did not buy a system that guarantees in building coverage throughout the County, or as it might be more properly called, a $160M system. I would love to have been part of designing and managing such a system, and as and emergency responder, I would love to have it available to me for use. It is simply not feasible.