The state of Tennessee Advanced Communications Network (TACN)

ka4bni

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Dresden, TN
You have to remember the TACN allows any P-25 capable radio onto the system. Kenwood, EF Johnson Armada, Tait, Harris, and others besides Motorola have very competitive prices now and they also provide phase II capability.
 

surfacemount

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Knox / Roane / Loudon counties, Tennessee
You have to remember the TACN allows any P-25 capable radio onto the system. Kenwood, EF Johnson Armada, Tait, Harris, and others besides Motorola have very competitive prices now and they also provide phase II capability.

Well, that's not completely true. In addition to the ones I'm talking about, Moto made a Saber that was P25. My understanding is that moving forward, it has to be a Phase II capable subscriber unit. Kenwood and EFJ are all hovering around a grand. I can't imagine what Harris stuff costs. I forgot about tait lol
 

Remington12G

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Well, that's not completely true. In addition to the ones I'm talking about, Moto made a Saber that was P25. My understanding is that moving forward, it has to be a Phase II capable subscriber unit. Kenwood and EFJ are all hovering around a grand. I can't imagine what Harris stuff costs. I forgot about tait lol
Here in Kentucky, we just bought around 600 Portable Harris XL-200P's. The price for those all of those alone were around 3 Million, not including all the mobile & desktop radios & excluding the eight 911 Consoles. Harris was quite expensive
 

INDY72

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The top two are Harris and Motorola for pricing,... As in expensiveness... Not to mention they are the top two competing for P25 business. They have been in competition with each other since as far back as I can remember all the way back to when it was still GE/Ericsson pumping out EDACS vs the first Motrola TRS's. Harris on most small to mid size systems usually has a better price bid, and from what I have seen, is also pretty good with the actual set up of the systems. But on larger and statewide type systems they keep running into issue after issue and problem plagued. Now subscriber gear is top notch. No idea what the NexGen LTE/LMR P25 stuff from them is looking like etc. Then you roll to JVC/Kenwood, who is newer in the competition for P25 systems, and their gear seems to be actually pretty good now. The earlier radios left a lot to be desired though, so they do have a bit of a bad name in some circles. Then you drop into the Tait, EFJ, Hytera price ranges. Both Harris and Motorola have radios that start at $2,000.00ish for the most basic of basic, and run up to over $3,000.00 for fully loaded. Both offer "All Band, Multi-Mode" units. As far as I know, the only manufacturer with no dog in any of the "big time" P25 hunts is iCOM. I have never seen them listed on any of the big contracts as acceptable. As far as putting a new radio on the TACN, as is stated, it must be TDMA capable. Even if its just for part time mutual aid/single event, it must be TDMA capable. All new full time users must be TDMA capable, and it is recommended that they mainly use TDMA, or ONLY use TDMA if possible. As for use of FDMA and TDMA, the entire network is in DDM - Dynamic Dual Mode, so FDMA can still be used, but it is not a spectrum efficient. To learn more about the deep functioning of P25 systems, please do hit up the wiki etc.
 
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Remington12G

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The top two are Harris and Motorola for pricing,... As in expensiveness... Not to mention they are the top two competing for P25 business. They have been in competition with each other since as far back as I can remember all the way back to when it was still GE/Ericsson pumping out EDACS vs the first Motrola TRS's. Harris on most small to mid size systems usually has a better price bid, and from what I have seen, is also pretty good with the actual set up of the systems. But on larger and statewide type systems they keep running into issue after issue and problem plagued. Now subscriber gear is top notch. No idea what the NexGen LTE/LMR P25 stuff from them is looking like etc. Then you roll to JVC/Kenwood, who is newer in the competition for P25 systems, and their gear seems to be actually pretty good now. The earlier radios left a lot to be desired though, so they do have a bit of a bad name in some circles. Then you drop into the Tait, EFJ, Hytera price ranges. Both Harris and Motorola have radios that start at $2,000.00ish for the most basic of basic, and run up to over $3,000.00 for fully loaded. Both offer "All Band, Multi-Mode" units. As far as I know, the only manufacturer with no dog in any of the "big time" P25 hunts is iCOM. I have never seen them listed on any of the big contracts as acceptable. As far as putting a new radio on the TACN, as is stated, it must be TDMA capable. Even if its just for part time mutual aid/single event, it must be TDMA capable. All new full time users must be TDMA capable, and it is recommended that they mainly use TDMA, or ONLY use TDMA if possible. As for use of FDMA and TDMA, the entire network is in DDM - Dynamic Dual Mode, so FDMA can still be used, but it is not a spectrum efficient. To learn more about the deep functioning of P25 systems, please do hit up the wiki etc.
Here in Central KY, they have decided to link 3 existing systems into one to start a regional radio system, everything is Harris from the radios to the cores. They have expressed that they will operate on TDMA full time with some FDMA use. They have announced that any county that would like to join can for a fee (of course) and must their equipment must be Harris. I like Harris somewhat but the pricing for RPM2 is quite ridiculous compared to what Motorola offers for their CPS License.
 

Floridarailfanning

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Sep 22, 2015
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East Tennessee
I have seen the Bid for 30 APX6000 4 APX8000 and 20 APX8500
Plus a 8 Channel SITE.
Just did a rough guestimation and would assume it was somewhere around $930K for the hardware. Obviously there is much more on top of that for setup and deployment, though.
I like Harris somewhat but the pricing for RPM2 is quite ridiculous compared to what Motorola offers for their CPS License.
Agreed.
 

INDY72

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I have not priced the CPS and RMS for ASTRO-25, but seeing as I only had to pay $40.00 ish for my MotoTRBO CPS and RMS it can't be too much worse.
 

Floridarailfanning

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East Tennessee
Is there any update on Monroe county's testing? I'm assuming the new site at Waucheesi will be 800MHz like Townsend, though a VHF site would make the most sense considering the terrain out there.
 

ccfire

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Oct 26, 2006
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tellico plains, TN
all i know of is as of right now they have been having problems with paging on the new system our e dispatch setup at the fd sometimes won't receive the page
 
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