I agree that it is good but not really. What do you do if that main hub goes down? Rely on the backup right? Thats nice but there is only one guy who really knows the in's and out's of the setup and thats Al RS-3. There are many parts of the system that can fail: the 72 mhz, 75 mhz and the individual 152.0075 transmitters. here are a lot more links, etc that can fail. Your telling me that if TN goes down that some other agency can seamlessly pick up the extra work? Possibly, but It doesnt happen that easily speaking from experience behind the console. The few times situations like these came up was during strong storms where everyone was getting hammered and it was hard keeping up with departments you normally dispatch. After all you would have to manually type all the info into the CAD or whatever your center is using to send the page. Try doing that while handling a ton of other towns and taking more calls with only two people is a bad idea. And unless you can think of a way for your local EOC or FD to be able to cost effectivly access the system its just easier to stay with tone and voice.
I am NOT against the POCSAG but I think they both have their place. You should also look into whether or not this is even an ISO recognized system. I would assume it would be since its not a third party owned/maintained system. Also check NFPA 1221 i believe they have a clause about alpha paging as well.
All of the KX towns are in the testing phase right now so whoever told you we dont have alpha pagers is wrong. We have had them for at least 6 months some of us longer.
How do I know about the system interference? Simple a PC, receiver, discriminator audio, terminal program and a yagi. I just watch the pages go and clash on a constant basis. Its even worse with a standard whip antenna that comes with your everyday scanner. The yagi is great for this reason.
Buckley Hill and Birch Mt. do not affect us for the most part. Our tone and voice is off Baker Hill in East Hampton and the POCSAG coverage is off Cobalt and Buckley, maybe some Birch Mt depending on your location.
The cost of the pagers is really a great selling point but you really have to think about losing the capability to monitor local communities activity, losing your fireground frequency if you have a 2ch pager, losing in some cases the amplified charger (some companies like Swissphone have this option), and the durability of a /\/\ tone/voice pager. Just losing the ability to monitor the operations/fireground frequency is a BIG problem in my eyes. Not every FF/EMT is into radios and most dont understand them so they rely on that pager to hear important stuff while enroute to a call (scene unsafe, driver needed, call cancelled, etc). Some other minor issues: you have to free up your hands to read the message and a low alert level (may not wake you up).
Keep up the good discussion!