BNN New Service?

[ten13]

I see BNN is advertising on their web site that a subscriber can "select the areas you want to receive....", which I assume is similar to what 1RWN has.

Is this new service up-and-running yet? Any feedback?


The only reason I stay with 1RWN is because they offer this type of selections, since I have very limited notification needs. And, even with that, I find it lacking at times.

Thanks!

 

[ecps92]

BNN has been around, long before 1RWN began buying up the local regional groups.

Any service will be lacking, as it's volunteer and just like you and your scanner, stuff get's missed. Also SOME groups have basic criteria on what get's paged. Not every Car Accident, Not every Smoke Showing etc

Even the Radio Notification networks are slowing down, with only a few still around, but not as active as the 70's-90's.

I see BNN is advertising on their web site that a subscriber can "select the areas you want to receive....", which I assume is similar to what 1RWN has.

Is this new service up-and-running yet? Any feedback?


The only reason I stay with 1RWN is because they offer this type of selections, since I have very limited notification needs. And, even with that, I find it lacking at times.

Thanks!

 

[Tech792]

Yes, this new BNN system is up and running. You can select per state, county and incident type. I know it works on smart phones like blackberry, Droid, etc. Not sure if the pagers have selectable service. I get it on my Blackberry and it works excellent.

 

[Mobile]

the system is new... it gives you more options to select which incident types you want to be notified and you can select the state and county as well.... works well with the blackberry!

 

[fdnybuff18]

I didn't realize that 1RWN is still in business... Do yourself a favor and go with BNN, huge difference in coverage....

 

[mike4164]

They're all the same.You have children that page BS that has no business being on there. The whole point of those services when they started was to have NEWSWORTHY events paged. Now they page missing persons,why do I need to know that. In NYC there are over 100 missing persons calls a day.Unless it is someone famous or high profile I don't need to know.I'll stick with my scanner and radios. I had both BNN and 1st responder and dropped them both. Too much BS on their systems. Maybe someday when they get rid of the children who page the crap I MIGHT go back to 1 of them. But I would not recommend any of them to someone who is serious about emergency services at this point in time.I might try IPN and see how they are,might be the same might not. We will have to see.This is just my opinion from my experiences and I am in emergency services for 28 years.

 

[ocP25bandit]

Sounds like someone couldn't play nice with others!! BNN is by far the leader in the area!!!

 

[mike4164]

I always play nice.What I am sick of is getting 50 pages a day for BS that is not newsworthy. The whole point of these notification services was for newsworthy events.As a professional in emergency services for more than 25 years I find it useless to have a service that pages missing persons that are not endangered ie:amber alerts or someone that would make the news ie: famous.Now I'm not saying that missing persons are not important, but out of the 100 missing persons calls in NYC everyday only 1 maybe 2 are real. Most are for kids that went to a friends house after school and ddint call their parents or something like that. Thats all I am saying.

 

[Mobile]

Sounds like someone couldn't play nice with others!! BNN is by far the leader in the area!!!

Especially now that you can configure what type of incidents you want and where exactly (down to the county) you want news from....

Yes, i agree those missings can be a little annoying, but i'll just scroll through them quickly.. i got rid of the pager some time ago... i receive bnn on the blackberry ...

 

[ofd716]

New BNN service sounds cool. I currently get BNN messages via text to my verizon phone, but haven't received any notification that they upgraded the system. How would I take advantage of the new system? Do I need a Smartphone or is this something I could log into like the 1RWN?

 

[nnjradiotech]

I don't like how BNN's restriction on Blackberry users. They will ONLY send notifications to the ...@xxx.blackberry.net email address associated with the phone. My Blackberry is a company phone and my blackberry.net email address is reserved for corporate communications and is monitored by our IT department. BNN's representative said that it is because they are afraid of their messages being forwarded to multiple people, maybe they should investigate this because by blackberry.net address is automatically forwarded to one of my personal email addresses so I can get my messages on my home computer.... oh yeah, I set this up in my options on the Blackberry Internet Service website.

I'm just one potential customer that won't be subscribing to BNN.

 

[kenisned]

What a wonderful commercial!

 

[beau6483]

why is bnn so expensive they want 107 dollars upfront with 24 dollars a month. the other services are no more than 10 dollars a month

 

[ten13]

I'm getting my pages on my cell phone, which is not a smartphone. 1st Responder took this into consideration when they first started sending them to phones, and limit the number of characters on each (routine) job to 160. As I say, my notifications are limited to just certain fires, so I'm not going to pay the extra dough for a smartphone for less than a dozen notifications a month.

From what I'm told, 1st Responder has a points system with their dispatcher, where a dispatcher can accrue a certain number of points per page they sent out. They can then cash in the points for gifts of some type. This appears to cause a problem if you don't have limited pages, in that you get a lot of crap for no reason other than the dispatcher looking to increase his points. It has also caused some problems between dispatchers.

BNN actually pay someone to sit in their office in Fort Lee to monitor and send out notifications. I believe that they also do some research to come up with some pages that no one else has.

I see here that BNN want $100 up front now, plus the monthly fee. For that price, they should GIVE you, at least, a pager, if not a Blackberry!

 

[IW_RADIO]

They're all the same.You have children that page BS that has no business being on there. The whole point of those services when they started was to have NEWSWORTHY events paged. Now they page missing persons,why do I need to know that. In NYC there are over 100 missing persons calls a day.Unless it is someone famous or high profile I don't need to know.I'll stick with my scanner and radios. I had both BNN and 1st responder and dropped them both. Too much BS on their systems. Maybe someday when they get rid of the children who page the crap I MIGHT go back to 1 of them. But I would not recommend any of them to someone who is serious about emergency services at this point in time.I might try IPN and see how they are,might be the same might not. We will have to see.This is just my opinion from my experiences and I am in emergency services for 28 years.

I couldn't agree with you more Mike! I too have had them all over the years and as long as they rely upon kids "playing up the call" or giving out false information, I will stick to monitoring myself or using my local fd dispatcher giving me "a heads up" on something major. Great post Mike and Happy Holidays!

 

[EAN840]

I downloaded Yahoo Messenger, and instead of getting a text message or a Email, i get an IM with the incident, works very good and i dont have to pay for text messaging plan, and it works without needing a xxx.blackberry.net email address

 

[mike4164]

Besides,with RR live scanners online and being able to have the internet almost anywhere including a laptop in your car who needs a pager anymore??? I could hook up my laptop in my car and listen to what I want to hear online,or better yet,use my SCANNER!!!!Happy holidays all.All those working the holidays this year be safe and remember scene safety so you come home at the end of your shifts.

 

[ten13]

Is that $107 plus $24 a month the confirmed price for BNN service? Is the fee dependent on what kind of notifications you select?

That's $400 for the first year (assuming that that $107 is a one-time payment). Sounds a little steep just to find out about a vacant building fire in North Hudson....!

 

[kenisned]

Is that $107 plus $24 a month the confirmed price for BNN service? Is the fee dependent on what kind of notifications you select?

That's $400 for the first year (assuming that that $107 is a one-time payment). Sounds a little steep just to find out about a vacant building fire in North Hudson....!

That would buy a lot of scanners or 1 digital scanner (almost).

 

[ten13]

That would buy a lot of scanners or 1 digital scanner (almost).

But the purpose of a pager is to eliminate the need to keeping your ear on a radio all the time (unless you have no life at all outside of the "first responder" business).

It's nice to just know about something, without having to listen to every radio transmission about it, or even ignore it if you're in a more "interesting" environment.

My problem is that I'm not getting the pages for the things I do need to know about; almost hit-or-miss with 1rwn. But I'll find out another way rather than pay all that dough.

In the meantime, I'll have to investigate further BNN and its prices.