McKenna or anyone else - What are your thoughts on P25 and "interoperability" in the same sentence?
The spirit or true intent of "interoperability" is to inter-operate with other agencies.
When a big agency spends millions of dollars on a P25 radio system in the name of "interoperability" it's a bit of a false statement.
Interoperability isn't about the technology, it's about finding the common denominator between all the other agencies you have to talk to. Buying the most expensive product you can might work in some places, but not others.
Say a big city or county buys brand X P25 system. They usually want everything P25 trunked, often 700 or 800 MHz. Fair enough....
Now, a few miles out of town, or just across the county line is a small fire department. They've been running a single channel analog VHF repeated system for their dispatch, maybe a few analog simplex channels for fire ground. Add in the nationwide interoperability "NIFOG" channels, maybe a few state channels. They're good, happy, and everything works.
Now, thanks to the city/county with the most money, everyone who wants to be "interoperable" with them needs to shell out $3000 or more for a P25 radio on the frequency band they have chosen. They usually have to pay a certain amount to said agency to put their radios on their trunked system.
Now, the little fire department across the county line has been forced from a $500 VHF analog radio into a $3000 (or more) 700MHz P25 radio so they can "interoperate" with the neighbors.
To a small agency, going from $500 radios to $3000 radios often means that were each fire fighter had their own radios, they now can't afford to outfit everyone with a brand new $3000 radio plus the monthly or annual access fees to the trunked system.
This either means that there are only a few radios available - which often turns into the wrong people having them, or
The "interoperability" never happening because the little agency doesn't have the desire to blow their annual budget for the whole department on a bunch of radios they don't really need.
True interoperability is about finding the lowest common denominator that works for everyone. That might mean that analog VHF is the default choice.
Unfortunately, Analog VHF doesn't make the big bucks for the radio manufacturers. The sales guys don't get huge bonuses or commissions off of selling a bunch of $500 radios. Sales guys want to sell a bunch of $3000 radios, even if they are not really needed.
But hey, it doesn't really matter because it's just taxpayer dollars, and that money is free an easy to get. All you do is raise a bond measure and tell the gullible voters the old line about "What if you called 911 and no one came?" The voters freak out and vote in a huge bond measure to fund a bunch of radios that are not really needed.
A real load of grade A bull droppings.
If the big agencies really had the money, the should be purchasing radios that will work on their fancy new 700MHz P25 Phase 2 trunked system as well as plain old analog VHF. But why do that when you can just force the small agencies to push their own bond measures onto their voters and buy their own $3000 radios, even if they don't really need or want them?
P25 does absolutely nothing for interoperability. That's all a huge marketing scam. Yeah, it works, but it takes loads of money to make it work. Taxpayer money. Harris, Motorola, etc. are laughing all the way to the bank.
Yeah, interoperability.
FCC and DHS has made it abundantly clear that interoperability needs to be about simple communications. But, that goes against what the radio vendors want. So, it often gets ignored.
Yeah, big city/county agencies could just program in some analog 8TAC or 7TAC NIFOG channels, but they radio vendors usually don't do that. It takes someone in the agency to demand it. Rarely that happens because the radio systems are either run by guys who don't know what they are doing, don't care, work for the vendor, or some IT guy that has zero clue what the end users do with the radios.
Just remember that next time your taxes go up and the county threatens you with no one showing up when you call 911.
