The latest CIP budget indicates an acceleration of funding for the project, bumping the budget for FY22 by $6M, and decreasing the FY23 budget by a similar amount. This represents an increase of funding in FY22 by 134%.
Radio Communications System Upgrade
Project #: 3220
This project will replace the County's technically obsolescent Motorola 4.1 800 MHz Smartzone radio system with an industry-standard P25 platform. The County replaced 80% of the critical portable and mobile radios by Sept 2015. The infrastructure and the remaining 20% of subscribers must be replaced.
Deficiencies: Obsolescence, Radio Coverage, Channel Capacity
Since this project was initially forecasted to CIP in FY15, the County secured the expertise of a public safety communications consultant firm and their recently completed Assessment identified more significant deficiencies in performance than those which were known in 2014 (see Altairis Assessment Report Sept 2017).
Critical Technical Support has dwindled. Motorola can no longer guarantee technical support or restoration response times for this critical communication system and the current maintenance and support contract has assigned Charles County to their “Best Efforts” support. This includes parts, technical expertise on outdated software and firmware, as well as our 24 x 7 x 365 network monitoring service. Nearly all of the critical components of the system are no longer supported and our service provider has to search with third party vendors such as eBay to attempt to find replacements.
Significant radio coverage complaints were revealed during critical user surveys and interviews. The Assessment revealed significant coverage deficiencies in several areas of the County (Benedict, Port Tobacco Valley, Marshall Hall, Bryans Road, Maryland Point, Waldorf) including the identification of 365 critical buildings, 108 of which are designated Critical 1 Buildings that require mandatory 95% coverage throughout.
Additionally, the County suffers from insufficient channel capacity issues due to the increased number of radio system users (more than 2,000) and their operational requirements. Adding more frequencies and/or moving to a spectrum efficient (TDMA) technology to correct our capacity issues is also not possible with the current system.
Enhancements: Interoperability, Mobile Data and Encryption
A P25 radio system would allow the County to improve our interoperability with regional partners. Replacing the portables and mobiles resolved a significant portion of the past interoperability deficiencies by allowing direct and instant communications with adjacent and neighboring agencies that have replaced their systems, the most significant being Fairfax, St. Mary’s, Calvert and the State of Maryland.
The P25 radio system will allow such mobile data services such as location for emergency personnel (APL/AVL/GPS) which will identify the position of personnel and emergency apparatus, wireless subscriber programming (Over-the-Air-Programming) which eliminates the costly need to manually re-program radios in the field which in turn disrupts the day-to- day operations of our public safety personnel, wireless subscriber re-keying (Over-the-Air-Rekeying) which allows remote reprogramming of encryption keys for instant changes to communications security.
While the new subscriber radios will now allow County users to operate on the most current encryption technology on other agency systems when supporting them in a mutual aid mode, the County does not have this capability when operating within County borders.
Upgrading the Public Safety radio system directly impacts the safety and security of the County's citizens, visitors, and first responders.
