Same crap in Oakland County, MI which has been working on going to Open Sky since 2002. By 2004 the system was supposed to be operational countywide. Today they are maybe 40% into the roll out (transition). It's been problems with hardware, software, dead spots, consoles, etc. Officers have said they to have no confidence in the system. Other complaints:
Lost calls (corrupted packets causing calls to be dropped or garbled,etc)
Occasional R2D2 voice
Dynamic deadspots (no they don't stay the same)
Calls received at different times (if you're in a room with other radios, they will not receive the call at the same time, you won't be able to hear)
If you turn down your portable it will automatically go to mute
Portables will stop receiving, if you're out of car you won't know dispatch is calling
Can't get the air if someone else is talking
Wouldn't work in recent foot pursuit due to noise (running, wind)
If you don't hold the mic close enough to your mouth you won't be intelligible
In-building coverage is fair to poor( that was a selling issue of this system- supposed to provide excellent in building coverage)
Then there are local dispatch issues, they combined a couple of cities on a dispatch channel and there exists confusion as to who is talking (which city)
Surrounding counties have switched to the state Motorola P25 system with no problem and we're still chasing bugs with Open Sky eight years later, system is tens of millions over budget already
* To cover dead spots they want to bilk the tax payers more on their phone bills to build more towers, all the dead spots won't even be known until the system is fully deployed countywide.
*Many agencies are not switching to the system due to all the problems
Officer complaints fall on deaf ears
Now there is talk that all the Open Sky dispatch consoles have to be replaced by 2012 due to re-banding.
Local FD used system for one week, first house fire and the system failed, wouldn't work with all the background noise, they went back to VHF, now they worked on the issue and are using both Open Sky and VHF
System users are discouraged from speaking out, the county keeps saying the system works fine. One officer started a facebook page, but they need to do more:
Open Sky Radio system sucks! | Facebook
So it's the same crap here. We're stuck with this garbage for at least another ten-twenty years. Thank God for cell phones.
