handicapped........

[jrm5265]

someone had the brilliant idea to pull out all the VHF mobiles when we had our Open Sky system put in in Newton County. Several instances lately where it was needed to coordinate with adjoining jurisdictions on VHF
A lot of our people were under the belief that oh dispatch can patch us through to VHF well maybe they can IF YOUR IN NEWTON COUNTY but they didnt understand that when your in another county Newton Dispatchers cant do squat for you because our system quits at County Line (its amazing it really does)

So...............word to the wise if you adjoin VHF using counties or your on Open Sky "Island" like we are please leave VHF mobiles in vehicles ....we could outfit them with basic underdash 25watt units for what we need but ........oh well.....

also when ever dispatch is asked to patch us through to another agency thats not Open Sky (which is most LOL) we either never hear back or after about 30 minutes they tell us they can't I picture somebody looking through a huge instruction book and never actually figuring out how to do it.......

what were they thinking...................what were they thinking........

Good Luck Spalding County !

 

[b7spectra]

No! Wait! What? Someone sold a county a radio system that DOESN'T work? No Way!

 

[N_Jay]

Who was responsible for the system requirements?
1. Your radio shop?
2. Your consultant?
3. Or was your agency "smart enough" to do it themselves?
(I'm guessing #3)

 

[jrm5265]

well...........

it was sort of a 2 & 3 combo
I think there was a couple of things that really played into this one
1. we are the type community that like to be a trendsetter and we love "bell & whistle" "the best one available" type things
2. I think that Motorola's arrogance during the bidding and pre-bidding period pushed the decision makers away from Motorola and I think Kenwood showed up for original RFP meeting its my understanding that they got shot down right away and it ended up being MaCom and Motorola.

I wonder whats going on in Spalding Co. last I heard MaCom had not started and people were scratching their head as to why? I also heard that at least one of the commissioners was trying to put the brakes on it after seeing so much Open Sky problem, even though I think they werent going Open Sky it scares them

 

[Metrofire31]

See my earlier post about longing for the days of the reliability and simplicity of conventional radio systems. Government would not need to be bailed out if the geniuses wasting OUR money weren't so totally uninformed and thoughtless.

 

[MTS2000des]

so what do the folks at Newton county 911 think about NY State's failed Opensky project? 5 years...50 million dollars and nothing but a buggy, broken and unreliable POS that makes Metro PCS PTT look like gold. MA/Com has done more damage to their already shaky reputation with OpenSky. After all, it's just another proprietary walled garden like Astro 25- except it's cheaper. One of these days we will get around to getting competent RADIO minded people in public safety versus IT people, or consultants who don't know their butt from a hole in a ground.

Maybe Sprint's latest SCAM PLAN to sell the aging Nextel iDEN system to the Feds as a "nationwide interoperability system" isn't such a bad idea, at least compared to OpenSky. Sprint just drove another 1.1 million customers away and lost 1.6 BILLION 4Q 2008, so everyone has traded their Nextels in for I-Phones so we might actually GET RIGHT THROUGH without "Network busy" "User not available C5" "Please wait...connecting" "No Service"- yeah just what I want when I'm about to die in a fire or getting filled full of lead.

Wait no thanks, I'll keep my good old "40 year old technology" VHF conventional radio. Someone might still be listening ya think?

 

[CCHLLM]

I've recently had several people in politically influential positions complain about MotherMoto's sales reps and their tactics. I may be no expert, but with the economy in the shape it is and with what's going on in the current radio market, wouldn't a person think that honest selling of the proper solutions for the particular applications would be the route to both satisfied customers and happy sales people? Oh wait, that would require honest, competent and knowledgeable people on both sides of the process. Sorry, I slipped up and forgot about reality.

Just call me cynical.

 

[MTS2000des]

yes, but the problem is the case of the Feds pushing P25 down our throats and the big players (Ma M in particular but they are not alone hence the case with OpenSky) pushing closed, proprietary walled garden trunking systems on everyone. We are so far down the road now in many cases that it's "cheaper to keep her" than to tear down and replace many of these overpriced and under performing systems. Take a look at Philadelphia with their system which Motorola sold them back in late 2001. It has been plagued with performance and reliability problems since day one of it's life cycle.

In response to the police chief's public display of disapproval of the system, Motorola's response is "well it's 7 years old- and no longer supported. Time to buy Astro 25 and we'll fix your problems. That will be another 60 million dollars you don't have. Pay up or put up with it."

So system managers and potential customers should stand up and take note: that's all the life cycle you get out of a (in 2001) 50 million dollar investment: 7 years. I know people who still have cellphones and DVD players from 2001. Used to be the average life span of such a system was 15-20 years, but all 50 million buys you is 7 years of multiple instances of downtime, fail soft, poor coverage and broken promises?

No wonder KENWOOD is now the world's second leading manufacturer of two-way radios and systems. With NXDN being the cat's ass in digital trunking, and unlike MOTOTURDO, it's a protocol supported by more than one vendor (Icom now makes NXDN), Motorola is doing everything to move towards going out of business. Or selling out to some Chinese rice factory like Puxing or Weirwei. Think it can't or won't happen? They did it with paging products, soon to be cellular subscriber division, and just about everything else they used to be top dog at.

But the bottom line is it is up to the CUSTOMER to make informed decisions about where to spend OUR tax money, and often times, they go on tainted misinformation and lies propagated by salesmen. For example, this mysterious "mandate" that all public safety radio be digital by 2013. It simply is NOT true anymore than P25 makes a radio magically "interoperable".

it's almost as bad as used car salesmen. Anyone see the 1980 movie "Used Cars" by Steven Spielberg?
Yeah, it's the "Fuchs Brothers" hard at work.

 

[CCHLLM]

The more complex the system, the more things there are to go wrong, and the more things there are to go wrong, the more it takes to maintain it. The more complex the system, the more complex interoperability becomes where different technologies are concerned. The more complex the system, the more money it requires to make it all work together and keep it working together.

While the well thought out and properly constructed and maintained analog trunking systems may well be deemed reliable and not subject to many failures, the latest and greatest digital simulcast trunking systems with all their zones, functions, links, and interops interfaces have become so complex that the comfortable reliability levels that we've grown accustomed to with conventional analog repeater systems, even when those are equipped with multiple receiver sites and links, is just no longer attainable, no matter how much money you throw at them.

 

[b7spectra]

The only problem with it all is that NO ONE is held responsible for the FUBAR. Motherola says it will cost $20m to build the system, the agency approves it. Then Motherola says it will take an additional $4m to finish up the system, the agency approves it. The system doesn't work right, so Motherola says they can fix it for an additional $12m, the agency approves it. Motherola says to the agency that they will have to upgrade their equipment to work with the previous "fix it" for an additional $3m, the agency approves it. It started out at $20m, when the agency finally scraps the system for an EDACS that works for $12m, the tax payers have already lost $39m, and Motherola post their best profit of the year. Sound right? Send this to your local commisioners and ask them if that is what happened.

 

[jrm5265]

open sky

you asked what does Newton County say about the New York, Milwaukee and Penn scenarios? Well all the end users talk about it and have passed around emails and printed out press releases and posts from here. But at this point what do you do radios are installed, our old system was pulled out (mobiles and system)
and the former sheriff and 911 staff have been quoted in local papers and UrgentComm magazine as saying that the system works great. ? I bet MaCom has that framed in gold in their headquarters. It sounds bad, not user friendly, on windy days its borderline un-usable, .......it would be very embarrassing for the dept heads to go back now and say hey the system we picked doesnt work well we messed up. With the old 800 and VHF ssystem pulled theres no way to really put pressure on MaCom its my undestanding that they feel its working fine? which tells me thats the way its supposed to be (hard to understand )
So we just ...............use it and hope one day somehow we can get something else.

 

[MTS2000des]

what really concerns me is where you guys in Newton county will be when MA/Com scraps OpenSky support (which they will or go out of business- which one comes first who knows..) and are stuck with proprietary hardware and software that NO ONE can maintain. What is the solution? Nextel? Cellular PTT? FRS? Two cups and a string?

The decision to remove the old radios and infrastructure was a downright STUPID decision on part of your 911 and E-comm staff plan and simple. The old system is PAID FOR, and what is the harm in keeping it around as a backup? Putting all your eggs in one basket is a recipe for disaster. And Newton county isn't the only ones in Metro Atlanta that is guilty of this type of thinking. all the agencies who gobbled up by the Motorola trunking money sucking vacuum cleaner have done the same- except the Cobb sheriff's office which kept their old VHF radios in most of their cars, cache of VHF portables, and still use VHF at the jail. The city of Marietta kept their old VHF conventional system and has enough radios to supply every city public safety person with a portable and when Cobb started the upgrade to digital power play, the city said NO THANK YOU. They pulled all the non-public safety radios off the old Cobb TRS and built out a VHF Passport trunking system and put the BLW, Streets and other city services on there and saved the taxpayers a ton of money. With Passport they have a variety of vendors to buy radios and infrastructure from, and it's access control is arguably more secure than Motorola's trunking systems thanks to ESN validation. But then this is what you get when you have people empowered to make decisions who actually KNOW RADIO and don't just listen to sales weasel blowhards.

I pray for the safety of those in Newton county who place their lives on the line with this garbage. Not giving the people who are sworn and sacrifice themselves to protect us the best, most reliable equipment is an insult to them and all who are responsible for these poor decisions need to be held accountable.

 

[CCHLLM]

Ever notice that so many "new" systems don't work any better than the "old" systems, they just work....."differently?"

 

[b7spectra]

Just wait until the Sheriff needs help and can't get his radio to work. ONLY then will there be discussion. If an officer calls 63, it's ok, but if it's the Sheriff . . . . . . . .