Here in NM, my city of Albuquerque is on the aged EDACS/ProVoice system and no plans on replacing it. Most counties around me are on analog, fortunately.
Now that it's fire season, I consistently here the mutual aid calls for wild fires between the counties, but GUESS WHAT? Our county/city FD's cannot even communicate with the counties next door.
What I cannot understand, is our state police switching to a 700 mhz P25 conventional system, in a vast mountainous desert state with far and few between. 700/800 mhz for city, sure just fine, but for a huge empty desert? C'mon. In the Albuquerque area, there is already many instances of broken comms and digital issues.
The national forests and state parks have already started switching to P25 conventional, all with the same effect It's a sad waste of money for these agencies and people will eventually suffer because of it.
1. Its ignorance and stupidity at the local level. Not a lack of equipment, funding, or even issues at the departmental level. I've worked enough cluster****s with AFD/BCSO and surrounding agencies to be very versed in what the issue is. As soon as the cities (abq,sf and lc) started going 800 trunked, the state reminded them that its a requirement to keep VHF equipment on board for interop. 10 years later, two of those three cities still have VHF equipment on board their emergency vehicles. Guess which two cities DONT have that kind of coordination issue on multi jurisdictional incidents.
2. Because one statewide system is forward looking. There are a SIGNIFICANT amount of issues with the existing VHF systems, 75% worth are specific to the ABQ metro. The VHF system also has significant gaps, which is why they went to sat comm for a while. Yes, there are issues. Its a TEST PHASE. This is where they get to figure out what the problems ARE, prior to a complete statewide rollout and deployment.
In addition, there was basically a "use it or lose it" deadline with 700mhz spectrum direct from the federal government. NM even had to file a waiver and extension because they werent using it and was about to lose it.
3. The reasons the feds are going to P25 conventional, starting with fire, and eventually trickling down to non fire, is because of the abilities that P25 offers. Its a well proven technology, if you have the infrastructure to use it. Traffic is clearer, it reduces the talkover that happens all the time on the way the forest and land management systems are setup, it allows for better prioritization, better dispatching, and better management. Having spent an assignment at a center thats testing it out, I can say for certain that the quality of comms were better on the P25 then on the analog. And i literally mean exact same parameters. User would try and call in on analog, poor quality. They would switch to digital and clear as day. They didnt move. As far as they were concerned, they switched channels in the radio. On the dispatch side, it sounded the same to me, just clearer.