Orange County CCCS P25 Update

[allend]

As long as nobody holds these government employee's fingers to the fire then nothing will happen. Once the dust settles in the community and people get use to not having airwaves anymore than business goes back to usual. Keep in mind that there was a reason from the beginning to encrypt everything. But all you can do is hold these Fire Chiefs to their promises, but promises can be broken. The Twitter feed put out by The OCFA Fire Chief can always be changed. You just never know.

Keep in mind you have not heard a peep out of the chief since that Tweet was tweeted by him almost 90 days ago. I guess its no priority since the system must be running fine. Good for them not for the general public anymore.

 

[allend]

Regarding encrypted radios. As you may know, all radio communications in Orange County are handled by the Sheriff’s Department. We have been working with them to unencrypt our radios. In the meantime, our IT team has found a work around and we have made our dispatch channel available through Broadcastify.

You can now hear streaming audio of our dispatch channel through Broadcastify.com on the web or mobile app. Here is the link:

https://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/22322

We are working to add tactical channels soon. I hope this information is helpful.

 

[RWPowell2]

In a previous post I used the phase “if and when” to refer to un-encrypting the fire talk groups. As time passes, I think the operative word is “IF” not when. I realize that the communications group have more important priorities, like keeping the system working. If it were just a technical task, it should have been completed by now. Unfortunately, it appears there are also politics involved in the process. This is sad state of affairs for a county I've made my home for the past 46-years.

 

[techman210]

Scroll back a bunch of pages, and see what I believed the process would entail. The Sheriff’s department is running the trunking system. Because sharing this responsibility is a recipe for disaster.

And while somebody said that OCFA has their own technicians, that’s true. But I’m sure that those technicians are busy installing, maintaining and programming the Bendix King radios on VHF for the ever-changing California and regional communications plans. Plus, likely all the data terminals and sirens, vehicle intercoms, HT chargers, etc. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. That’s not a menial task.

It’s not as simple as visiting every subscriber unit and turning something “on” or “off”. It typically has to be done at the system and subscriber level. And of course in the meantime, everything has to work. 24/7.

As for Motorola assisting or running the project - for a number of years, their so-called expertise is severely lacking.

 

[engineco16]

Well it looks like all of OCFA is back online, and then some. It us a while, but we made it happen! Thank you Chief Fennessey!

Orange County California Live Audio Feeds

Orange County California Live Audio Feeds

www.broadcastify.com

 

[MEDIC135]

This is good headway but the actual radio is still not decrypted yet. It will all take some time tho and I’m sure they will make it happen

 

[allend]

Well it looks like all of OCFA is back online, and then some. It us a while, but we made it happen! Thank you Chief Fennessey!

Orange County California Live Audio Feeds

Orange County California Live Audio Feeds

www.broadcastify.com

This is a step in the right direction. They added alot of the tacticals back. But hopefully the real deal is coming back soon.

 

[MtnBiker2005]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1181657482193584130

 

[allend]

This is what is so crazy and 1 county down the road southbound from OC and the whole San Diego County is going to a new NEXT-GEN Phase II system and it seems like everything is going pretty smooth and it looks like no encryption is being used or being added to the new system yet. Looks like Law Enforcement and Fire and other agencies are all getting switched over on a timeline and ahead of schedule with minimal hick-ups.

Then you have this small County of Orange that made some crappy decisions and now have to clean up this whole mess of fixing all of these radios that should of never been encrypted from the first place. I commend San Diego County for not being hell bent on adding all of this encryption crap. Seems like San Diego County and City have never been a really big encryption city and county. There has been some encryption added over the last few years but LE is pretty much been kept open and it looks like the switch over is looking like LE and Fire will stay in the clear.

Just mind boggling who made these crappy decisions. I am just glad Chief Fennessy is most likely an old school guy with good intentions to re open fire communications not just for the public access but for his own firefighters that work for his department. He is listening and making the right decision. OCFA and surrounding fire agencies need to pull away from OCSD and make their own decisions when it comes to their radio comms and future decisions moving forward. Also, giving props to the other surrounding fire chiefs for The County of Orange too when the decision was made by all of them. Good job and for the interim, no we have dispatch and tacticals online for internet streaming. Its not the best solution but it works for a temp solution to a permanent fix.

 

[allend]

Oh and BTW "The Orange County Sheriffs Department" as a whole just signed a new Union agreement that all personal across the board get a 3.5 percent raise for the next four years. That is 14 percent for everyone.

 

[allend]

Looks like Metro-Net is now streaming all of dispatch and tacticals now

Orange County California Live Audio Feeds

Orange County California Live Audio Feeds

www.broadcastify.com

 

[RWPowell2]

The current solution to provide un-encrypted Orange County fire communications does not come close to solving the problem. Lets do the math! I previously used five Uniden scanners to monitor 36 OCFA talk groups and 32 Metro Net talk groups, along with several other non-fire talk groups.

The Broadcastify solution allows listening to 8 OCFA TG and 11 Metro Net TG. All I need to do this, is to purchase 19 computers. Also, I will need one very large pipe to the internet and a new router. Not at all practical!

I hope that this is only an interim step in the process of removing the encryption from all the fire talk groups in Orange County.

 

[Mikek]

Has anyone found an iPhone app that will let you listen to multiple feeds at the same time?

 

[allend]

Well most likely this is just a temporary fix to a permanent solution with streaming. If the encryption was going to stay in place forever than there would not be all of the dispatch and tacticals being streamed across the board. The County of Orange was not prepared to switch off the encryption the same week they went encrypted. Per the fire chiefs after the first week they changed their minds and wanted the encryption disabled.

Keep in mind that The County of Orange had a very old backbone Motorola SmartZone Type II system. I believe the upgrade was forced real fast to get up to speed on full P25. They pushed out all of new APX radios across the board with LE and with Fire. I believe Fire received 7K radios give or take. They had their old programming and all of their new programming all in one codeplug when pushed out to these radios. Then over a period of two years or so they were going to implement the OTAP and OTAR and then be-able over time to program radios on the fly and re-key without any touch anymore.

The backbone of the network is just not up to speed to handle this big decision to un-encrypt like most statewide systems use these days. So either they are in the process of re-programming radio's manually or eventually get the hardware from Motorola installed to get OTAP and OTAR in place so they don't have to re-program thousands of radios. So for the mean time they are offering streaming to their employee's and the general public so they don't get pounded with emails and pressure on when this will get completed. Its frustrating but there is alot of logistics involved to get things ironed out. I bet there are alot of un-happy techs right now having to do all of this extra work for some really bad decision making with encrypting the fire departments in OC.

 

[zz0468]

The backbone of the network is just not up to speed to handle this big decision to un-encrypt like most statewide systems use these days. So either they are in the process of re-programming radio's manually or eventually get the hardware from Motorola installed to get OTAP and OTAR in place so they don't have to re-program thousands of radios.

OTAP and OTAR aren't practical in cases where there are large numbers of radios needing to be programmed. In this case, there are probably literally thousands of radios needing attention, and it's probably got to be done the good old fashioned way. There's going to be some technical details to be worked out to avoid large blocks of radios being unable to communicate until the entire fleet is done. It's a non-trivial task that I would expect to take some time to implement.

 

[zerg901]

The current solution to provide un-encrypted Orange County fire communications does not come close to solving the problem. Lets do the math! I previously used five Uniden scanners to monitor 36 OCFA talk groups and 32 Metro Net talk groups, along with several other non-fire talk groups.

The Broadcastify solution allows listening to 8 OCFA TG and 11 Metro Net TG. All I need to do this, is to purchase 19 computers. Also, I will need one very large pipe to the internet and a new router. Not at all practical!

I hope that this is only an interim step in the process of removing the encryption from all the fire talk groups in Orange County.

dont think you need 19 computers. iirc I have listened to 5 broadcastify feeds on 1 PC. You can buy Fire 7 Tablets for maybe $30. They might be able to handle 5 feeds at once also. Or maybe you can buy 2 old PCs for $10 each at a yard sale.

 

[RWPowell2]

Report Finds Public-Safety LTE Devices Have Speech Intelligibility Concerns

An interesting article that supports what we are currently experiencing in public safety communications. I concede the advantage of conserving bandwidth with digital audio, but the level of compression reduces intelligibility. This article doesn't mention the audio distortion experienced in Smart Zone(R) systems, but that also adds to the lack of intelligibility.

Report Finds Public-Safety LTE Devices Have Speech Intelligibility Concerns

MissionCritical Communications, Radio Resource International, and Public Safety Report - wireless voice and data communications for mobile, remote and public safety operations

www.rrmediagroup.com

 

[WD6ABC]

dont think you need 19 computers. iirc I have listened to 5 broadcastify feeds on 1 PC. You can buy Fire 7 Tablets for maybe $30. They might be able to handle 5 feeds at once also. Or maybe you can buy 2 old PCs for $10 each at a yard sale.

Curious, when you're listening to 5 feeds on Broadcastify and one is active, can you tell which one is active?

John

 

[riccom]

most scanners have alpha tags over the stream, and will tell you what one is active for example the phoenix fire feed will have dispatch (right speaker) on one side and the other side (left speaker) will say mesa fire dispatch
this is in the html5 player or even winamp will tell you

 

[drsl2000]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1181657482193584130

I'm beginning to be concerned that maybe this is the new solution for "clear dispatch and tacs".

Even tho this article, clearly indicates radios would be re programmed...

OCFA Chief orders decryption of firefighter radios

The Orange County Fire Authority has reversed its decision to encrypt its radio and dispatch communications that was initiated Monday.

www.latimes.com

I'm starting to feel like they came up with the cheap solution of just providing streams instead of updating all the radios. After all, that would provide the same (in OCFAs view) service right? Clear listening of the dispatch and tacticals ! It would also give them the ability to cut the feed instantly when needed...

Streaming is show stopper when mobile.... thankfully the last two fires (last Thursday and this morning) on Santiago Canyon where on OC Access and VFIRE tacs....