San Benito, TX - Police Department gets upgrade to radio system

[Thunderbolt]

SAN BENITO, Texas — A new digital radio system being installed in Rio Grande Valley police departments is expected to improve communication between police here and area law enforcement agencies, Assistant City Manager Art Rodriguez said Wednesday.

San Benito Police Department gets upgrade to radio system | san, benito, radio - Valley Morning Star

 

[radioman2001]

They must have gotten the last of the CVPI's, but at $27,740 ea, they didn't buy the cheapest model, and I don't think they got state pricing either. The radio I believe is an XTL1500? Which is the cheapest Motorola digital model radio out there. I wonder what they had for radios before, and I like how the disinformation machine cranks out that the radios had to be replaced due to a FCC mandate when probably they could have based on their age been just reprogrammed.

 

[bezking]

Yup, the radio is an XTL1500. As for the "disinformation," it's not necessarily true that the radios they had could have just been reprogrammed. Based on the fact that they bought the lowest tier of XTL out there I wouldn't be surprised if their old fleet was so old that it didn't even support narrowbanding...

 

[wilcomister]

They must have gotten the last of the CVPI's, but at $27,740 ea, they didn't buy the cheapest model, and I don't think they got state pricing either. The radio I believe is an XTL1500? Which is the cheapest Motorola digital model radio out there. I wonder what they had for radios before, and I like how the disinformation machine cranks out that the radios had to be replaced due to a FCC mandate when probably they could have based on their age been just reprogrammed.

Here is some inside info.... As per the units, they did get some of the last units from Philpott Motors the "State Contract" Vendor at State contract pricing. However this includes a Fully equipped, Turn-Key, CVPI, with the "Texas Package Liberty Lightbar & CenCom Gold with Speaker", Havis Center Console, Partition, not including the radio or Camera System at about $25,690. These units are being financed through a municipal leasing company for 5 years. As per the radios they are replacing, they are replacing, MCS2000, LTS2000 & LCS2000. The new Multi-Site Regional Radio System is starting to be loaded, However the same channel plan will be in use. We will only have Interop talk-groups to switch too like before.

 

[radioman2001]

That's great info, the radios though could have been just reprogrammed for narrow banding, but it appears they are going to a Multi-Site Regional Radio System, and that would require new radios. Smart move, let someone else do the heavy financial part namely the infrastructure and just pay as you go as a user. You get great coverage if implement properly, and interoperability, but as I see a lot of departments doing, once they go digital they go encrypted, since it's so cheap.

 

[wilcomister]

I did leave out that the Regional system is a P25 system. as per the current plan it will finish out at 11 sites. Off the Top of my head the following sites are now live, Linn, McAllen, Weslaco, Willacy, Brownsville, Port Isabel, I am missing a few