Just to clarify, I have made statements in the past that they *MIGHT* possibly someday in the future switch to digital. I have said this in response to the "Which scanner should I buy to listen to Orange County Fire Department" questions.
I have no knowledge of this actually happening, but at this point, I would imagine that it could happen fairly easily since all their subscriber units should be P25 capable by now and the infrastructure already has been P25 capable since the new system was built. I've been told that once all of the equipment is in place, it is simply a matter of flipping a switch.
The Fire Service as a whole is very different from the law enforcement side of things (obviously) in that they are generally not ready to adopt the whole digital thing yet. Check out this report by the Phoenix FD as an example:
http://blog.tcomeng.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/phoenixfireradioreport.pdf
Some of it is pure baloney, some of it is good IMO, but you can see where some of the resistance comes from.
The Fire Service really has no need to encrypt. The only exception to that could be the ALS base hospital contact TG's (6B thru 6K) and even then, there are usually no names or other sensitive bits of information passed.
Just wanted to clarify my statements and make sure I'm not leading anyone astray:lol:
