Notes from the Radio Control Board meeting of December 10, 2025
First some major personnel news. Norm Farley, the director of FIRST, retired effective 12/1/2025. Jennifer Zambito, a longtime engineer on the project, has taken over the leadership of the department. Also retiring at the end of this month is Kurt (not sure of last name,) a consultant who has been with the project since its inception more than 15 years ago. I'm sure we all wish them the best of luck.
New Limited Primary Partner - Carroll County is requesting 12 talk groups for police and fire operations in the unlikely event of a total failure of their 800 MHz TRS. They have 1,300 radios capable of operating in TDMA mode. Carroll County is a fairly low use region of the system and would have negligible impact on the system. Approved.
Just about every county surrounding Maryland, and states like NJ and NC have some sort of interoperability partnership with Maryland FIRST. A few outcasts in PA and WV are still outstanding (not naming names lol).
The T-1 to MPLS backhaul project has been completed. Motorola promises cleaning up the punch list by 3/31/26.
Virtualized Site Controllers are required for the next system software release A2025.x FIRST will need to replace all its GCP-based controllers by 2027 to install its next scheduled system software upgrade to A2026. FIRST has received all necessary equipment on 9/17/25, and began deploying in November. They plan to have it all installed by 3/26.
Coverage Improvement Program - currently planned sites:
- Patapsco (Greenfield) - site selected
- Cumberland (Greenfield) - site selected
- Queenstown (Greenfield) - site finally selected
- Barton (Existing) - Monopole
- Bretton Woods (Existing) - Montgomery County owned site
- New Germany SP #1 (Greenfield) - site identified
- St. Michaels (Greenfield) - site identified
- Cambridge (Greenfield) - FY26; replacing existing site, moving to county owned land
- Accident (Existing) - FY26; site identified
- Burtonsville (Existing) - FY26; Montgomery County owned site
BDAs.
Courts of Appeal - Completed
ICC Police Station - Completed (replaced existing hardware)
Kent County EOC - Completed (replaced existing hardware)
Dorchester County PSAP (In progress)
MD Port Admin - Cruise MD Terminal (In progress)
MDEM HQ - (in progress)
Two Channel expansion sites.
Howard Simulcast - Will receive all new D-series RF equipment
Anne Arundel Simulcast - Will use legacy equipment salvaged from Howard site (presumably one half of the 6-packs)
Harford Simulcast - Will use legacy equipment salvaged from Howard site (presumably the other half of the 6-packs)
Geo-redundant Prime Sites.
The two busiest cells - Baltimore and Anne Arundel (FY24 and FY25) will go first. Then the edge sites that do not get much overlapping coverage from other sites: Garrett (FY26); Cecil (FY27); Allegar (FY28); and Worcester (FY29).
Multiple fiber legs being installed or planned to increase resiliency.
FIRST has approx. 130K subscriber radios authorized to operate on the system..
System software version A2024.1 is current.
ISSI circuits between the cores located in Hagerstown and Pikesville to the PG ISGW have been upgraded. FIRST still uses the PG County system to enhance FIRST coverage in that county.
Power problems are still a factor in system failures. Considering new approaches to ensure power reliability.
Recent reporting of coverage issues in Washington and Frederick counties. FIRST is encouraging users to report all instances of coverage issues via FIRST's online tool. Users need to be very specific about where and how they experience problems. Issues can be caused by many factors, but there is a lots of new 5G deployment in those areas, as well as major construction work, and new radio devices in use. Results could drive new priorities in the Coverage Improvement Program.
WiFi in state buildings will be configured as nodes for OTA programming and Smart Connect. The first building to be configured for WiFi access will be DoIT's hq in Crownsville (natch). Subscribers must be optioned for WiFi for this to work.
Genesis Provisioning Manager will be configured to allow radio techs to grant access to FIRST subscribers during times when FIRST admins are not available.
The Radio Maintenance and Master Radio Equipment contracts are now separated. The RM contract will go to Motorola. The MREC is still being finalized, but will allow for competitive bidding for items not manufactured by Motorola, and for construction and maintenance of infrastructure, etc. Conceivably that will allow for savings by eliminating markup / management fees imposed by a prime contractor - maybe, lol.
