P25 Phase II TDMA

[brownlab]

It has been a while now (since late summer 2011) that I have read anything concerning Project 25 Phase II TDMA. The last information was over the summer and was that Motorola was manufacturing and shipping the radios yet I am not currently aware of any jurisdiction planning to upgrade. That does not mean of course that no one is currently doing so, just that I have not read anything (although I have been looking). I am in the DC area and I am monitoring the two jurisdictions using the X2-TDMA which can be monitored with the PRS 800 by GRE. GRE has stated that they do not know if the PRS 800 will work on a Phase II system until one is available to test on (or something to that effect) So if you live in a place that is planning to upgrade to Phase II TDMA, please post.

Thanks, BL

 

[W2NJS]

I thought that Loudoun County VA had been on Phase II TDMA P25 for a long time now.

 

[ka3jjz]

Prince George's county Maryland also uses this - although I don't have a PSR800 to test with, it would most likely work

Mike

 

[GTR8000]

Do we really need to go over the difference between X2-TDMA and Phase II again? I thought we beat that topic to death. I even edited the P25 Wiki page so it was clear we're talking about two different things. *sigh*

 

[brownlab]

Chauffeur is correct. X2 is not the same as Phase II and he has posted about the difference on the Uniden board (if not other places) so no, we do not have to revisited that. Yes Loudoun CO VA and PG CO MD are currently using X2. I am waiting for a true Phase II TDMA to be implemented somewhere but to the best of my knowledge, that has not occurred. A post dated March 9, 2011 from Motorola states "Nearly a dozen customers have already contracted with Motorola Solutions to deliver P25 TDMA functionality" but here we are in November of 2011 and I cannot find any recent news of anyone upgrading. Perhaps tight local and state budgets are preventing many from signing up? I don't know however if anybody does know, let me know.
Thanks BL

 

[c5corvette]

Assuming the PSR-800 magically works with Phase II... what I want to know is how would you ever know if an agency is using 'Phase II' instead of 'X2' ? Do you have an APX radio? (W2NJS don't answer that one please.)

Unless you look at an APX radio on the system, I don't know that you would ever know the difference! You'd actually have to look at the code plug in the section for that Trunking system, look at the channel spacing in the "ASTRO 25 Channel ID" tab and also there are two checkboxes on the "ASTRO 25" tab called "X2 Voice Capable" and "Phase 2 Voice Capable" that might help ;-) make a determination, but I doubt it.

Any real switchover (usually driven by capacity needs) happens in /V\oto's TDMA capable G-series infrastructure and assuming the subscriber device is programmed correctly and with the right flash code everything should be transparent to a capable radio (and scanner) which would lead me to the assumption that there would be no big publicity hype over any so called cutover from X2 to Phase II.

 

[bldavis]

Bear in mind, the Phase II standards encompass a lot more than just TDMA, so to some extent, the delays in deploying are more about waiting for desirable standards to complete, than about TDMA itself. Moto, Harris, and Cassidian all have running TDMA code, but most jurisdictions are waiting until standards and codebase shake out before deploying (if they have option to upgrade - not many bought that until just recently)