A few random thoughts... no opinions, rants or facts otherwise implied... just an outsider looking in...
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Muscle Memory.... Or "That's How We've Always Done It...
Once someone learns how to navigate all those zones (aka Harris calls them Profiles) and talkgroups in a radio, it's easier to keep things the same on a new radio system so you don't have to retrain / relearn something new.
Still one would have to ask the big question... how does a firefighter lay down his hose in order to navigate to Profile X, Talkgroup Y in a flash-over situation?
And how often does he/she REALLY perform that type of radio operation under far less strenuous events?
Regardless... too complicated for effective utilization !!!!
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Pure Laziness
No one - at any level - wanted to take a serious look at the old system, radio setup, and radio procedures while asking critical questions like "what works well", "do even use Talkgroup ABC123", "what do our end users think", or "can we simplify" ?
Same thing applies to programming - easier to "cut and paste" vs think.
With professional sports team events, the state fair, the Milwaukee Mile raceway, weekly summer festivals at the Summerfest Grounds, the Milwaukee Air and Water Show, and the 2024 political convention - has there ever been a TRUE review of interoperable communications in this town???
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New Toys... Fully Loaded
Everyone understands that these new radios have a lot of capacity for zones/channels/talkgroups - we all get that.
L3Harris (formerly GE/Ericcson), Motorola, JVC Kenwood (formerly EF Johnson), Tait, and BK all have similar bells and whistles - so that's an equal playing field.
But just because you have that capacity, doesn't mean you need to fill it to the brim.
Yeah, there's the NIFOG interoperability talkgroups and/or statewide standard interop talkgroups.
Yeah there's always the POSSIBILITY that you'll get deployed ANYWHERE/ANYTIME... but didn't MARC1 work just as well???
Wouldn't money be better spent on NEW FIRE APPARATUS??? The MFD fleet is old and needs replacing MORE THAN NEW RADIOS!
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Lack of An Interoperability Mindset Across Agencies
Not just the city, but county/regional/statewide there's a whole lot of "it's my turf" attitude.
In the Southeast Region:
Milwaukee is on its own P-25 System.
Milwaukee County and Waukesha County share their P-25 System (one shining example).
Ozaukee County is on their own P-25 System.
Walworth County is on their own P-25 System.
Look at the state capitol: Dane County (on VHF), Madison (on 800 Mhz), and state on WISCOM.
Look at other surrounding states in the Midwest and one can quickly see how true Interoperability and shared systems do indeed work... and work quite well...
STARCOM21, Michigan MPSCS, Indiana SAFE-T, Ohio MARCS, Minnesota ARMER.
While nothing's perfect, but there's a lot of better ways to skin this cat... and most of those systems are 20+ years old, have been tried and proven in all range of incidents, and host agencies at all levels on a 24/365 basis.
WISCOM never worked right, had some pretty horrendous installations.
It never was fully utilized at any real "statewide" level.
In the Milwaukee Metro Area, just two (2) talkgroups are routinely used: WSP SE Dispatch and R-Call 21 (only during severe weather).
All the other "so-callled" WISCOM talkgroups are just re-transmitted patches from other systems.
Other agencies use legacy systems or simply do not use radio communications - ie cellular.
Unsure if the new 700Mhz state system will be any better or solve this without agreed to POLICY and DIRECTION to back up the system capabilities from all stakeholders.
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Again, just random thoughts.... I'll step off the soapbox for now....
