Chicago, IL - Chicago is concerned over Congress' take-back of T-Band

[radioman2001]

I can't say much about Motorola but Harris on the other hand is really not interested in anything other than large scale trunked systems which are either Opensky or P-25. I had to contact my Harris rep no less than 8 times, and still didn't receive a call back. When they were notified they would be excluded from bidding because we couldn't get the information we needed, then they returned calls. Personally I wish we went with Motorola and the GTX 8000 bases, but exchanging one Mastr III for another sure made a lot more sense for it's ease. To be fair Motorola didn't return phone calls either, but then complained that the bid was too restrictive when it got let out. Another thing is that Harris doesn't have a large systems group like Motorola, or they just didn't think that 63 Mastr III base stations and 150+ M7300 radios was a big enough contract.

 

[902]

I can't say much about Motorola but Harris on the other hand is really not interested in anything other than large scale trunked systems which are either Opensky or P-25. I had to contact my Harris rep no less than 8 times, and still didn't receive a call back. When they were notified they would be excluded from bidding because we couldn't get the information we needed, then they returned calls. Personally I wish we went with Motorola and the GTX 8000 bases, but exchanging one Mastr III for another sure made a lot more sense for it's ease. To be fair Motorola didn't return phone calls either, but then complained that the bid was too restrictive when it got let out. Another thing is that Harris doesn't have a large systems group like Motorola, or they just didn't think that 63 Mastr III base stations and 150+ M7300 radios was a big enough contract.

That's a sad state of affairs. I believe that at least one of those two has a big story-board with a regional and national strategy and tracks regions as "us" and "them" (like red-state/blue-state). If it doesn't fit their deployment strategy, they ignore it until the opportunity to fill in the blank comes up. Of course, that's just me. Both of these "playas" have deep pockets into LTE. What a better infrastructure-dependent foray than that? You get to make the infrastructure components, you get to make subscriber units which are virtually disposable and have no more than an 18 mo. life cycle, and no off-network communication (currently). They can do pretty much everything but operate the network, which goes ka-ching for everything.

 

[MTS2000des]

and what better way to prevent the "spread" of cost effective LMR based technology from other vendors (NexEDGE and DMR) by taking away the spectrum to run it on (UHF T-band, which would be ideal) and force the users to dealing with the two monopolistic LTE vendors?

So America isn't it?

 

[radioman2001]

There has been a lot of discussion about LTE and P.S. The product is not really oriented towards large coverage area 2-way voice with numerous users scattered all over the place. It's more oriented like cellular for one on one communications. I can see LTE used as an adjunct for 2-way, for services such as data as in running NCIC, NYSPIN text messaging,maps,video and pictures. IMO LTE might be considered as the next generation of Tetra, not very practicle for P.S. 2-way.
Unfortunately politicians have gotten involved with P.S. communications, spured on by the cell carriers looking to make a killing in either bandwidth ownership or contract services to P.S. The radio manufacturers will always try and create a demand for product that is not easily replicated by a competing vendor, or is copyrighted. Actually the radio 2-way radio manufacturers stand a chance to lose their predominance if LTE comes on line, you could actually see P.S. using some form of IPADS, and Crackberry's for communications eroding their monopoly/duopoly for 2-way.
Getting back OT, I see a problem with the giveback that actually makes it cost more to stay on T-band then moving to 700 or somewhere else. If the FCC does in fact sell off T-band, whether it's to TV, private speculators or even P.S. themselves, then we are just recycling monies, since P.S. will have to pay for something they already had owned.( frequencies in the NY metro area are going for 1 million dollars each!!!) If they stay on T-band they now have to pay a speculator for use or ownership of frequencies and again the public gets screwed

 

[902]

A freeze on T-Band licenses is imminent

In his blog, Klaus Bender of the Utilities Telecom Council announced that Acting Bureau Chief David Furth (FCC PSHSB) discussed an upcoming Public Notice (PN) where there will be a freeze on T-Band. Changes for anyone already licensed in T-Band were okay if within their existing footprint, but expansion of footprint would require a waiver. New licenses... probably not. In the PN, T-Band licensees will likely be exempted from narrowbanding. More to follow after the PN comes out.

UTC Insight

 

[902]

And, still no word on what's going to happen to IG (business) licensees there.