Scanner Tales: Rise and fall of T-Band in the Chicago area

[GTR8000]

From what I had read at the time the T-Band was selected for takeaway thanks to NYC. They had plans to move from there and were looking for a way to finance it. The story (true or not) was that the frequencies and the dates coincided with their plans, any other users of T-Band around the country be damned.

I'm not sure where you read that, but the exact opposite was true. NYC was and still is very heavily invested in T-Band for public safety, and fought tooth and nail for years against the T-Band giveback legislation of 2012 (which was eventually repealed in late 2020). Even while the giveback was still going forward, the NYPD was already planning the migration from analog to P25 on their T-Band frequencies. The FDNY went forward with having VHF take a back seat to T-Band for their primary dispatch channels (even taking them off the air completely for a number of years), and invested heavily in T-Band capable APX mobiles for all apparatus. DoITT (now OTI) also upgraded their old T-Band SmartZone system to ASTRO 25 on the same T-Band frequencies. They briefly flirted with a 700 MHz cell for the ASTRO 25 system, but instead upgraded the 800 MHz SmartZone cell to ASTRO 25, operating on the same core as the two T-Band cells.

Bottom line is that there would've never been enough spectrum on 700 or 800 for NYC to abandon T-Band, and so any alleged "plan" for the city to do so with the FCC footing the bill would've been completely impractical.

 

[kc2asb]

Reading these stories reminded me of the TV I had as a little kid, which had rotary channel selectors for VHF and UHF. I remember hearing people talking starting on channel 14 and up to channel 18 or 19. It wasn't until I got into the hobby in my teen years that I realized I had been hearing the NYPD.

 

[N9JIG]

I'm not sure where you read that, but the exact opposite was true. NYC was and still is very heavily invested in T-Band for public safety, and fought tooth and nail for years against the T-Band giveback legislation of 2012 (which was eventually repealed in late 2020). Even while the giveback was still going forward, the NYPD was already planning the migration from analog to P25 on their T-Band frequencies. The FDNY went forward with having VHF take a back seat to T-Band for their primary dispatch channels (even taking them off the air completely for a number of years), and invested heavily in T-Band capable APX mobiles for all apparatus. DoITT (now OTI) also upgraded their old T-Band SmartZone system to ASTRO 25 on the same T-Band frequencies. They briefly flirted with a 700 MHz cell for the ASTRO 25 system, but instead upgraded the 800 MHz SmartZone cell to ASTRO 25, operating on the same core as the two T-Band cells.

Bottom line is that there would've never been enough spectrum on 700 or 800 for NYC to abandon T-Band, and so any alleged "plan" for the city to do so with the FCC footing the bill would've been completely impractical.

The story making the rounds in the Chicago area was that NYC was looking to move off T-Band in 5-7 years and offered it up with the eye on reaping the auction proceeds to pay for their new system. That accounted for the 9-year timeline to account for the ever-present delays). This all came about sometime after the original plan when the FCC was trying to decide on which spectrum to reallocate. There were rumors about all of UHF from 450-512, all VHF-High, everything below 700, and others. Supposedly NYC convinced them that T-Band was the best one to go so they could migrate to 700 MHz. and have that paid for by auction money.

Whether it was all true or not is debatable but it was pretty much accepted as gospel by us in the Midwest and some of our compatriots in L.A. and Florida.

 

[ff026]

The story making the rounds in the Chicago area was that NYC was looking to move off T-Band in 5-7 years and offered it up with the eye on reaping the auction proceeds to pay for their new system. That accounted for the 9-year timeline to account for the ever-present delays). This all came about sometime after the original plan when the FCC was trying to decide on which spectrum to reallocate. There were rumors about all of UHF from 450-512, all VHF-High, everything below 700, and others. Supposedly NYC convinced them that T-Band was the best one to go so they could migrate to 700 MHz. and have that paid for by auction money.

Whether it was all true or not is debatable but it was pretty much accepted as gospel by us in the Midwest and some of our compatriots in L.A. and Florida.

Knowing the mindset of the NYPD communications section (now LSSD), there was no way they would jump from analog conventional to digital trunking, without a heavily investment in infrastructure and testing. Years of testing.

 

[IC-R20]

There was a boatload of misinformation going on then. One communications salesman told us that we would be required to "go digital" regardless of what frequencies we were using by the end of 2009. I suspect he had a quota to fill, but it wasn't going to be by us. We had others trying to tell us that P25 was obsolete and all UHF operations had to be switched to NXDN, of course he sold just what we would need.

Of course there were other actual proposals before the T-Band takeaway was announced. One had all VHF High-band, one had all UHF land mobile, another had everything below 470 MHz. and more. So many ideas were floated and all never saw the light of day except for the T-Band one.

From what I had read at the time the T-Band was selected for takeaway thanks to NYC. They had plans to move from there and were looking for a way to finance it. The story (true or not) was that the frequencies and the dates coincided with their plans, any other users of T-Band around the country be damned.

The NXDN scam is still going. The local EMS agency in my area got bilked into that as did the sheriff department where my grandma lived. At least that one was NXDN96 though so it sounded great.