PHILADELPHIA - Police, firefighters and prison officials will receive about 2,700 new radios as part of a proposed upgrade to Philadelphia's emergency radio system.
Philly could get 2,700 new police, fire radios | AP | 04/30/2009
What is truly alarming is how short the life cycle of Philidelphia's Smartzone 4 system has played out to be...this system was installed in early 2002, that's only 7 years ago. Since it's installation it's been riddled with problems. And of course the typical Motorola answers to the problems and concerns come down to:
"Throw more money at it"
"Buy the latest version"
"We are no longer supporting xxxx this week"
No other company except Microsoft does business this way, dictating such ridiculous terms to their customers. A large investment like a 60 million dollar radio system for public safety should AT LEAST be viable for 10-15 if not 20 years of service before being due for replacement.
7 years? Are you kidding Motorola? Potential buyers of Astro 25 should ask the big question to their Motorola sales team and FTR's and that is:
How long is Astro 25 going to be a viable product, with P25 phase II, 700MHz LTE, and other superior technology just around the corner? What is the long term return on investment on financing such a huge capital cost if the system will be out of date, no longer supported, and yesterday's newspaper in 5-7 years when we aren't even done paying it off!
A more prudent move is to keep an existing, cost effective analog system running until something better than P25 phase I is out, tested, proven and reliable. Not to mention available from multiple vendors, not this sham that Astro 25 has turned out to be. It is foolish for government agencies who are closing fire stations, furloughing employees, and raising taxes to be wasting money replacing perfectly good, functioning radio systems just because a vendor wants to upsell their latest wares. Not to mention the problems that plague the P25 phase I vocoder, it seems clear that this is another opportunity for a vendor who is cash strapped and in dire financial straits (have you seen Ma M's stock price lately? Junk bond status so says S & P) to soak up as much money as possible from clients who don't know better and are often scared into buying new products they don't need.
This cycle will never end so long as government plays the proverbial fat rich guy. Problem is, like a great majority in this country, that is not the case anymore. Many local municipalities are in serious financial crisis. Like Atlanta, where I live. We are closing fire stations because not enough personnel can work due to mandatory furloughs yet Atlanta was conned into paying millions for an Astro 25 system to replace a perfectly good, functional 31 channel Smartnet II system that was brought online in late 1995. Motorola has EOL'ed a popular product in use for more than 20 years not because it has flaws, and has become affordable in comparison to it's replacement, but because they want to force adoption of their next cash cow. Misinformation and disinformation campaigns get going, such as the ludicrous assertion that "all public safety radio must be digital like the DTV switch". I always fall off my chair laughing when I hear that fecal vomit but you'd be amazed at the number of government officials who quote this fictional "digital radio mandate" which no doubt, are rumors spread by vendors who are out to make a killing off the coffers of John Q. Taxpayer. And the other worn out tape of "P25 gives you interoperability" gets played over and over, yet as in our case in Atlanta metro, with 14 different 800MHz trunking systems, a Cobb officer still won't talk to a Fulton officer- nevermind this promise was made back in the 90's by the SAME VENDOR (Motorola) who forced Smartnet as an "interoperability" solution and we all quickly dumped our perfectly good VHF and UHF conventional systems for 800.
We still don't talk to each other, and radio systems have little to do with it. But the sales team never tells the truth, like the belief that is all too common that somehow just because a subscriber radio is P25 capable means a VHF radio can talk to an 800, or a UHF can talk to a VHF radio. You'd be amazed at the number of people who actually believe this. And once again, the vendors are primarily responsible for this crap.
So, the Atlanta Fire Department will have nice, new digital radios to respond to those fire calls but no firefighters using them on the other end to answer. Absolutely absurd and demonstrates what is broken with the entire process.
You Philadelphians should ask yourself, when does this mad spending your money stop and when do you actually get what you paid for initially?
