I get it that the decision has been made, but that shouldn't exclude educating the public on the process, and how much money is spent on what.
No disagreement but sadly two things would have to happen:
1)-People would actually have to
CARE. The fact is they don't. This is one of the reasons governments have no accountability. If WE THE PEOPLE don't DEMAND accountability, we won't get it. This means taking time to read through hundreds of pages of documents, sending emails to officials asking questions, and going to meetings, many of which are during hours when most people are unable to attend. (Almost like it was designed that way on purpose).
2-The media would actually have to serve the public interest and not just their stockholders/corporate owners. Good luck getting anywhere with this in 2015.
the new congress is fresh full of corporate stooges who will do their constituents work. Set your watch to that.
So, a story on the radio system, how it works, how it helps, how much was spent, why it was needed, are all questions people would have, and answers which would satisfy the appetite of viewers and readers. Of course, that's all from a news manager's perspective.
I'd love to help with such a piece. I'm willing to donate my time and professional expertise. Sadly though, I doubt it will make it pass an editors' desk.
But a good place to start would be the several McClatchy pieces on one vendors' dominance in the industry. Excellent reporting, very surprised a corporate media entity like McClatchy would take on such a deep and damning series:
McClatchy investigates Motorola Solutions
You can see, I'm passionate about keeping officials accountable.
I think many of us are, but we also live in reality.
I am not one who believes all trunking systems are wasteful, a county like Clayton did in fact have an aging and inadequate radio infrastructure that was not even narrowband compliant (they had been operating under a waiver post 2013) and spent quite a number of years vetting their new system.
Did they spend alot of money? Yep, modern public safety grade LMR is costly for a county of that size and population. But they needed it. They were on a different RF band than agencies around them, had major coverage issues (the noise floor on VHF high band is now full of pollution from everything from LED lights to cheap part 15 devices), and didn't have enough voice channels for all the users.
The issue I have as a citizen is the blanket decision to encrypt ALL talkgroups. Granted, at least they used industry standard AES-256 and not some proprietary ghetto encryption like ADP, but I don't think they considered that locking out DISPATCH talkgroups also keeps the "good guys" out. It certainly does not help their already tainted image to the media, that is, if the media even cares.
To their credit, their RFP was put out three years ago and they spelled out everything they wanted, INCLUDING encryption.
The time for people to speak up has long past. Plenty of public meetings between initial RFP and final acceptance occurred. Obviously it wasn't a priority for anyone who lives there, or uses a scanner there, to speak up and make their concerns known.
Just sayin, it's a little too late a this point.
Outdated VHF analog? There's nothing outdated about it. The VHF analog system went a lot further than Cobb County. Not that it needs to.
That isn't the point. The problem was the users of the old system complained of major coverage issues, and on channel interference. They were also operating under an STA.
They did need a new system. Just because trunking may not be right for some rural county (which I concur in most cases it isn't), Clayton county is hardly rural. It is part of the metro Atlanta region, home to the Atlanta airport, and has a population of over a quarter million. All the agencies around them are on 700/800 trunking. It makes perfect sense for them to migrate to such a network, albeit IMO, they SHOULD have worked with the city of Atlanta to expand their Astro 25 phase 1 network into Clayton county and run simulcast sites off the CoA's zone core. This could have shaved off MILLIONS from the purchase price.
But then this would mean actually having to SHARE. Something that is a foreign concept in this region. Hard enough to get some folks to share one pair of frequencies, I can only imagine, it would be like moving a mountain to get two governments to share their stuff!
sock puppet's off-topic post text here
They didn't!
None of these cities NEED to go to a digital TRS.
Georgia ranks last in integrity amongst all other states. It is precisely these kinds of deals that underscore the incompetence and corruption.
Can we please ignore the off-topic sock puppets and stick to the topic of
CLAYTON COUNTY 700MHz ?
What other counties 30 miles away who aren't a party to Clayton county's system, their choice to encrypt, or what kind of radios someone else are using are otherwise completely off-topic.
