AFAIK only chief and prevention officers have or will receive the new radios. I am not sure if that will trickle down to the battalion chiefs. At about $4,000-$5,000 each, you are looking at a minimum of $400,000-$500,000 as there are over 1,000 firefighters for the county fire dept. I don't see it happening any time soon unless there was some grant money available. Hard to justify that kind of money when there was a threat of closing fire stations due to budget cuts this fiscal year. I thought I heard about going to the next version of the Bendix-King radio which I assume would be through attrition. Of course, I could be wrong.
The MDCs run off the Sprint network as the primary data point when not in quarters followed by 2 back up PSEC data channels. In quarters, PSEC is primary as a wireless hot spot?