Converting a county/city to MPSCS ?

[jack3726]

Has anyone came across a document or website that would outline how a municipality would convert to MPSCS. Let's say your a county with 100 radios and 2-3 frequencies, F1, F2, F3. How would you convert to MPSCS under such a setup. Would you do a phased in approach and the old radios would remain around during the conversion(or a new TGID patched), who decides on the TGID's and alpha tags that you would be assigned, is this FCC or the state. Once your given TGID's, who decides who get's which ones. If your assigned let's say 3 TGID's to mimic the older F1-F3 channels is this the way that this might be done. Now, how does one build a business case for this such as cost savings etc, would it include FD and Public Works as well or would they be phased in later. I know MPSCS has costing to it and wanted to know more about this.

 

[krokus]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.973 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

I'm not sure about a document, since converting is so subjective. The jurisdiction(s) converting need to put thought into how they want to operate over the radio. (This can be a good time to make a change.)

You would have to ask the MPSCS folks if your public works would be allowed, as the "PS" portion of the acronym stands for Public Safety.

As for cross-patching, the conventional frequencies can be linked to a talkgroup, but this is not the best way. In my opinion, it is better to get the plans made, equipment installed, training accomplished, and make the cut over. The legacy system can be used as a backup.

Deciding on a programming template, and which radios to use, can take some work. Part of your template should consider any nearby agencies that you do, or reasonably might, run mutual aid to/from.

The MPSCS site has a list radios that can be used.

The alhpa tags, typically, follow a pattern, but that is up to the jurisdictions.

 

[seamusg]

Information on MPSCS here:
MPSCS - Michigan Public Safety Communication System

 

[drdispatch]

Every county automatically gets a certain minimum number of TG's, in addition to the G-, H-, & I-Event's, STATW 1 - 8, etc; such as xxP911, xxCOM, xxEMD, xxSPEV's, xxEMER's, and so on. It is up to the county, in coordination with the folks at DIT (Department of Information Technology) to determine how many talkgroups will be needed. The best way to switch is as krokus said, and just make the jump as a county.

And public works can join in, as there are several road commissions, DPW's, and of course MDOT on the system.