My understanding is that system use will begin in late April in a hybrid setup with talkgroups patched to the existing analog frequencies. The way it was described is that the portables will be on the TRS and the mobiles will remain on analog until fully transitioned. This seems backwards to me and the communications guy at EMA may have misspoke, but that’s the way it was presented at the public safety committee. Then again, I’ve also been told that portable coverage in most of the county proper with the existing TRS sites is pretty much equivalent to what they currently have on the analog system, so along with the full coverage they already have in city, I guess it makes sense. I still don’t understand why they would keep the mobiles on analog though. It wasn’t mentioned what agency would be transitioning to the hybrid setup first, but since pretty much all of the subscriber deployment has been focused on SO, I’d say it’s safe to assume that they’ll be the first to begin using the system
None of the new sites are operational yet, just the existing four in the city. The system coverage acceptence test is scheduled to begin in mid October with final system acceptance scheduled for January 2021 provided all goes well.
For future reference, if you’d like to keep up with the progress on the system, the best way to do so is to scour the EMA reports and public safety committee minuets posted at rutherfordcountytn.gov. Some type of update is almost always presented there.