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What does interoperabilty mean to you for public saftey?

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hitechRadio

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What are you thoughts, on what interoperabilty means or how it should be used in public saftey. Technical or otherwise.
 

MTS2000des

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The word interoperability has become an overblown tool for radio vendors, the telecom cartels, and other special interest groups to further drain the taxpayers of this country selling overly complex "solutions" to in many cases, rather technically challenged buyers with deep pockets lined with someone else's money.

I posted a link to this before, and I'll post a link then quote it, because I think it sums up well what many of us think, this comes from a 33 year veteran who has worked for many north Georgia agencies and work for a large municipality in my county when someone made comments about a TETRA system being deployed in one Georgia region. I think it sums up pretty much what the situation really is regarding interoperability:

(link to post made on RR: http://forums.radioreference.com/ge...forum/273926-troup-county-ga.html#post2096709 )

I don't understand why so many people think the only means of achieving interoperability is for every public safety agency in every county, every state and across our nation to be using the same type of technology (i.e., P25) and operating in the same frequency band (i.e., 800 MHz). Interoperability today is not rocket science with all of the various methods and technologies we have available to make the radios operating in the various frequency bands and varying technologies communicate with each other. Here in Georgia we have the Georgia Interoperability Network (a Statewide Motobridge System that resides in every County owned and operated 9-1-1 Center in our State, plus in other key locations), a large number of Raytheon/JPS ACU-1000 interoperability switches mounted in Mobile Communications Vehicles (MCVs) and even some mounted in fixed locations like 9-1-1 Centers and EOCs, command vehicles equipped with the ICRI (Incident Commanders Radio Interface) by C-AT, the IOpt CommTac-2 by Trident Micro Systems and cross band repeaters, so I think we have interoperability covered very well in our State.

People need to realize that each city and county must take care of providing the best and most affordable two-way radio communications solution within their jurisdiction first and everything else must be taken care of afterwards. Facts:

1. Every city and or county cannot afford P25 (both upfront costs and annual reoccurring maintenance costs).
2. Every city and or county does not need P25 to achieve interoperability;
3. Every city and or county doesn't need to pay for all of the features and functions of an expensive P25 trunked radio system when all they use their radios for is to conduct standard push-to-talk capabilities to coordinate and deliver public safety services;
4. Every city and or county does not need to pay for a system that gives them 10 to 15 times or more the coverage than they need on an average day (Example: a city that covers 10 square miles does not need to pay for 500 square miles of coverage). Many city, college and university police departments are coerced into splitting the annual maintenance costs of a countywide system, and some even a regional system, which puts these smaller agencies in the position of paying for way more than they need or will ever use.

Agencies need to step back and take a hard look at how often interoperability is needed or used on weekly, monthly and annual basis then look at all of the options that can provide interoperability and compare costs. Example: a city fire department on average needs to communicate with the county fire department via two-way radio about once a month, so what it the best and most economical way to achieve this? Is it more economical for the city fire department to remain on their VHF analog conventional system and purchase an 800 MHz P25 mobile radio on the county's radio system and a cross band repeater interface kit for every fire engine in their fleet to allow the Lieutenant or Captain on the engine to enable interoperability between city fire personnel and county fire personnel at the same incident scene or would it be more economical for the city fire department to purchase an 800 MHz P25 mobile radio and four 800 MHz P25 portable radios per fire apparatus, plus pay for the maintenance on the entire fleet of 800 MHz P25 radios and pay the county an annual fee per radio to be on the county's 800 MHz System? This same comparison could be used even in cases where an agency is looking at a VHF or UHF digital system such as MotoTRBO, NEXEDGE, TETRA, etc., so you can see there are many more things for an agency to consider other than just picking which radio looks the best.

I have been employed in the public safety communications profession for more than 33 years working in large, medium and small agencies in both full time and part-time positions and I have learned budgets and technologies are always a major challenge regardless of the size of the agency I worked for. I have learned there is usually more than one way to achieve a goal, but the problem is most agencies have tunnel vision and simply refuse to look at other options or feel they don't have the time to do any type of comparison. Many agencies are pressured into making a decision by both a vendor and one or more adjacent jurisdictions without being able to consider other options. This is unfortunate, but is the truth.
 

ecps92

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The Right People talking to the Right Person at the Right Time.

Face-Face, Telephone or Radio or Electronic (Text, Twitter, email)

What are you thoughts, on what interoperabilty means or how it should be used in public saftey. Technical or otherwise.
 

FF153

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It doesn't matter if you have a 45K radio system if no one is in a interoperable mind set. Old habits die hard and if for the past 50 years the fd haven't been able to talk to the pd and the pd hasn't been able to talk to the fd then when they get a interoperable system nothings going to change.... Even if they have the capability to talk to them there not time going to.

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Interoperability is not a technology, it is a state of mind.

That's about %99 of it. All of the devices in the world are useless if people can't/won't be communicators.

My county drank the Kool-Aid about 10 years ago to the tune of 13 million. They are planning the P25 overlay and replacement now for 2017, at about 21 million. What a crock.
 

hitechRadio

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Interop has a lot to with standards.

Example: your computer has LAN and/or WiFi. If you were in the market for a new computer and it did not have either of these standards or worse had some completly proprietary to the manufacture to communicate with the outside world but was not compatable with ethernet or wifi with out some type of high priced adapter(patch). Would you buy it? I highly doubt you would. It would just make it hard on the end user to have the interoperability you would need to communicate to the outside world.


In Public Saftey Standards should be used, for digital that is APCO P25 Conventional or Trunked. For Band it should be 700/800Mhz.



I posted the below quote in another thread.


I see and hear on all the forums posts about interoperability, and that this can't talk to that.

ANALOG does not do one damn bit of good if the agencies are not on the same BAND.
If your on a different mode or band your gonna have to have a patch.

There are many advantages of going digital, analog is primarily becoming a way of interop on the same BAND.

Every digital system Nexedge, TRBO, P25, ect...has its pro's and cons. But one thing is for sure that P25 is the defacto mode of DIGITAL interoperability, but still does not mean jack if you not on the same BAND.

I wont get into the argument on this digital mode sounds better than this mode debait, I have heard them all, and my opinion they sounded the same, of course that is, if the agency keeps the firmware up to date on equipment. Every vendor offering different digital modes, there audio has gotten better and better with progressive firmware releases.

MY solution is that there be a federally mandated band and mode for public saftey. IMO that would be 700 and 800Mhz and P25 for the Mode. Problem solved!
Won't matter if you trunked or conventional. Change out Nexedge (Open Proprietary) or DMR (Open Standard) as the defacto open standard P25,and I would support that. As long as we are all on the same Digital Mode, OR better known as CAI (Common Air Interface).

I hear from people all the time we ain't going to that 800 or 700 crap. People say it takes more sites to cover a given area with 800 than VHF, That is not neccasarily true. It would actually take about the same number of sites,,,,Y you might ask. Because you CANNOT put a VHF site at 500 600 feet on a tower and not expect to not get interference from someone. Thats y most vhf sites are at a lower height on the tower typical around here is less than 300feet most only 150 feet due to interference issues.
At 7/800Mhz a height of 500, or even 1000 feet i would not be worried about much interference. Not saying that there are no exceptions to this rule.

I hate the idea of goverment mandating anything, but in my mind this is the only solution.

We could just keep adding cross band or cross mode patches everywhere, Planning and practice is key to interop some people say and I think thats true. But you can never Practice or Plan for when a real disaster happens, things fall through the cracks. When you have a limited number of VHF interop channels they will get used up very very quick. Has anone seen or no what a NIFOG book is, look how many interop channels are avaliable for 700 compared to VHF or UHF or 800.

My reason for 700/800Mhz is it is not a mess like VHF you never know what kind of repeater split or interference you may get from day to day. . UHF may be ok 5mhz split but you have alot of business Business stuff going on there.
700 has a 30MHZ split 800 has a 45mhz split.

I know from personal experiance just how well multiple agencies and juristictions on VHF in one location using portables and mobiles works out. NOT VERY WELL.

Multiple agencies and juristictions on 7/800 all because of the split it works PERFECTLY!

Yes, you can have multiple bands hooked to P25, nexedge, trbo system, but unless you plan on installing multiple bands at each and every site which would be very license and cost prohibitive. it is not a solution.

I do agree that P25 equipment is still WAY to high priced, but thats another subject all together.

A mandate to a specific band and mode is my solution, then again LTE may solve all our issues in the future, LOL.

Just my opinion!
 

DisasterGuy

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While interop is largely about governance, technical standards do go a long way. Audio bridge solutions do have many limitations.

What does interop mean? Regional, statewide and multi-state planning and governance along with technical standards that are open and shared. The merits of the technical aspects of P25 aside, it IS the standard and the previous post demonstrates the value of standards quite well.

I work with Harris Network First and Motobridge systems regularly and they do have their place. We use them primarily for the activation and patching of national interoperability channels on VHF, UHF and 800.


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hitechRadio

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That's about %99 of it. All of the devices in the world are useless if people can't/won't be communicators.

My county drank the Kool-Aid about 10 years ago to the tune of 13 million. They are planning the P25 overlay and replacement now for 2017, at about 21 million. What a crock.

Agencies on scene together would communicate together if they could. Either due to technical reason or training reason's. When on scene it's not not matter of "I dont wanna talk to them".
There traning of saving and/or protecting lives takes over and they absolutley would want to communicate with each other.

Also,
If your in Flager County, FL grid EL99
They show to be Edacs Provoice, seems to me they are making a smart move to P25 if that is the case.
I guess drinking the Kool-Aid means they went Trunking? If so, nothing wrong with that IMO.
 

DisasterGuy

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Also it is the natural upgrade to P25 from EDACS since it is EOL and parts support ends in FY17 with major components ending even before that.


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MTS2000des

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Interop has a lot to with standards.

Example: your computer has LAN and/or WiFi. If you were in the market for a new computer and it did not have either of these standards or worse had some completly proprietary to the manufacture to communicate with the outside world but was not compatable with ethernet or wifi with out some type of high priced adapter(patch). Would you buy it? I highly doubt you would. It would just make it hard on the end user to have the interoperability you would need to communicate to the outside world.


In Public Saftey Standards should be used, for digital that is APCO P25 Conventional or Trunked. For Band it should be 700/800Mhz.



I posted the below quote in another thread.

The problem with your argument is that isn't in the real world.

We aren't talking about wifi and cellular, this is like comparing bicycles to automobiles. They both have wheels and use roadways, this is where the similarity begins and ends.

LMR is not cellular and never will be.

P25 is not the end all solution, many agencies simply cannot AFFORD nor do they NEED some expensive to own, upgrade and operate DTRS. They don't NEED to inter operate on a daily or even weekly basis with other agencies. 99 percent of what they do is in house.

When you compare prices of what a P25 trunking system costs for a small to medium jurisdiction to say, a MotoTRBO or NXDN system you see the light of why agencies choose the non-p25 solution.

700/800MHz require expensive infrastructure and there is a finite amount of spectrum available, especially in urban areas, so to limit public safety to one band and one network is counterproductive and asinine.

A better solution are affordable multiband and multi network subscriber radios...but even this has limitations. Most trunking systems are limited in the number of individual radio IDs and then there is the logistics of provisioning them.

At the end of the day, bridges,patches and good old face to face are more practical solutions than this "one size fits all approach" you seem to be hung up on hi tech radio.

Counties,cities and states have differing needs. What works in Atlanta (800MHz) would not practical to build out in Alaska (ALMR is primarily VHF).

It's great to have pipe dreams of some nationwide public safety radio system paid for with unlimited budgets, but them there is reality which is a totally different animal altogether.
 

mmckenna

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Always an interesting subject.

Interoperability should be the lowest common denominator that lets agencies talk together. Far too often its the largest agency that decides their technology is best and everyone else needs it to talk to them. In reality every P25 radio I've ever seen out there will do Analog. No reason to force all the volunteer fire agencies and small departments to buy expensive equipment they don't need.

Our county is 100% VHF analog, and everyone, Fire, EMS and Law Enforcement can all talk via existing analog VHF channels.
 

zz0468

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In Public Saftey Standards should be used, for digital that is APCO P25 Conventional or Trunked. For Band it should be 700/800Mhz.

I posted the below quote in another thread.

Wow. Just... wow.

That's an extremely narrow view of both interoperability, and the fiscal and physical realities of many public safety agencies.

Interoperability doesn't REQUIRE that everyone be on the same band. It merely requires that some sort of effective plan be in place for the appropriate agencies to communicate. That plan COULD include P25 on 700/800, but that can be entirely inappropriate for some agencies, and some situations.
 

hitechRadio

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The problem with your argument is that isn't in the real world.

We aren't talking about wifi and cellular, this is like comparing bicycles to automobiles. They both have wheels and use roadways, this is where the similarity begins and ends.

LMR is not cellular and never will be.

P25 is not the end all solution, many agencies simply cannot AFFORD nor do they NEED some expensive to own, upgrade and operate DTRS. They don't NEED to inter operate on a daily or even weekly basis with other agencies. 99 percent of what they do is in house.

When you compare prices of what a P25 trunking system costs for a small to medium jurisdiction to say, a MotoTRBO or NXDN system you see the light of why agencies choose the non-p25 solution.

700/800MHz require expensive infrastructure and there is a finite amount of spectrum available, especially in urban areas, so to limit public safety to one band and one network is counterproductive and asinine.

A better solution are affordable multiband and multi network subscriber radios...but even this has limitations. Most trunking systems are limited in the number of individual radio IDs and then there is the logistics of provisioning them.

At the end of the day, bridges,patches and good old face to face are more practical solutions than this "one size fits all approach" you seem to be hung up on hi tech radio.

Counties,cities and states have differing needs. What works in Atlanta (800MHz) would not practical to build out in Alaska (ALMR is primarily VHF).

It's great to have pipe dreams of some nationwide public safety radio system paid for with unlimited budgets, but them there is reality which is a totally different animal altogether.

I do realize it is a pipe dream for everyone to be on 700/800 and P25 I was being more or less hypothetical.

From simple view technically it would be the best way.

The other option is as you had mentioned, everyone have dual/tri band portables.

We already have to consider band for interop, but know what digital mode an agency is using. Yes we can always fall back to FM for interop on scene (where interop it most needed).

I am not saying patches are a bad thing, I just believe there are better solutions than patches.

And I completly diagree that inteoperabilty is state of mind. It is both technology and state of mind. You cannot have one without the other.

I do believe that it is sad that P25 equipment is still costly even though almost every manufacturer makes a P25 subscriber. I think it is partly due to Motorolas prices on there high teir equipment keeping the market up IMO. Maybe what we need is the chinese to start pushing cheap Dualband P25 trunked equipment, if they are not already.

The other part of cost is when manufactures say this is for public saftey they think public saftey has a endless supply of cash to purchase this stuff.

Do you have any idea how much an ACU1000 cost's, or the trident microsystems boxes costs. Marked for public satey so they add 300%to the Price.

On the other side as example's you have Trbo and NXDN initally or primarily marketed to Business market.
Costs are low and offer alot of the features P25 offeres at a much cheaper price.

I can not argue with agencies choosing NXDN, TRBO, or just stay FM. Because of costs.

I am not arguing with u about your view, because your are right , my point is i wish it wasn't this way, it should not be this way.

Hypothetically what would your unrealstic (or asinine like my idea is as you put it) solution be to interoperabilty be?
 

hitechRadio

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Wow. Just... wow.

That's an extremely narrow view of both interoperability, and the fiscal and physical realities of many public safety agencies.

Interoperability doesn't REQUIRE that everyone be on the same band. It merely requires that some sort of effective plan be in place for the appropriate agencies to communicate. That plan COULD include P25 on 700/800, but that can be entirely inappropriate for some agencies, and some situations.


Yes that was the point, It may be narrow minded to you. I was thinking outside the (your narrow minded) box. Do you you have any other suggestions, recomendations.

Like MTS2000, you disagree with what I have said, which is toatally fine. And I agree it would not work in the real world, with that being said my idea is technically possible IMO.

If you have a better idea, lets hear it? I will not bash your idea even if it is as extreme as mine.

Guys I did not start this thread to bash one another (well just me so far,LOL), give me your experiances, real world, your ideas, your thoughts solutions.

If you have never worked or been around public saftey communications please dont comment, public saftey doesnt need D-Star, HIHI

TTFN
 
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For Band it should be 700/800Mhz.

/QUOTE]

In some locations, this has proven a faulty band many times over. In the hammocks in Florida, 800-700 cannot penetrate the canopy, and in areas it somewhat does, further deteriorates when it rains. The VHF just keeps on working.

In mountainous terrain it has shown poor propagational qualities, requiring multiple added repeater/node sites to match VHF/UHF coverage. In many cases, staying with existing bands when going P25 can afford a much more efficient, robust, safe, and reliable system. One does not have to spend much time in research to find many examples of jurisdictions changing to the 700-800 band, only to find themselves without the coverage they once had, and shelling out more taxpayer money to fix something that wasn't broken. "Narrowbanding" was sold/mis-represented to many jurisdictions as meaning "buy our XX Million dollar 700-800 system" to be in compliance. "Interoperability" has been miss-used and spun in the same way.

No one band is right for all applications or a given service.
 

hitechRadio

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For Band it should be 700/800Mhz.

/QUOTE]

In some locations, this has proven a faulty band many times over. In the hammocks in Florida, 800-700 cannot penetrate the canopy, and in areas it somewhat does, further deteriorates when it rains. The VHF just keeps on working.

In mountainous terrain it has shown poor propagational qualities, requiring multiple added repeater/node sites to match VHF/UHF coverage. In many cases, staying with existing bands when going P25 can afford a much more efficient, robust, safe, and reliable system. One does not have to spend much time in research to find many examples of jurisdictions changing to the 700-800 band, only to find themselves without the coverage they once had, and shelling out more taxpayer money to fix something that wasn't broken. "Narrowbanding" was sold/mis-represented to many jurisdictions as meaning "buy our XX Million dollar 700-800 system" to be in compliance. "Interoperability" has been miss-used and spun in the same way.

No one band is right for all applications or a given service.

I agree with you,

But VHF has it's issues also.

VHF does not perform as well in a city enviroment, interfernece from consumer electronics as example.
Interference when the band is up. (Ham Term HIHI). Does not perform well when antenna is close to body. And other issues.

I agree that 700/800 is not the cure all band. I was just chosing what I felt is the better of 2 evils, LOL

The other reason I did not suggest VHF is because it is so screwed up when in comes to frequency coordination. The 700/800 band has huge advantages over VHF when comes to orginization of the bands.
 
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