hitechRadio
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- Joined
- Dec 23, 2010
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- 537
What are you thoughts, on what interoperabilty means or how it should be used in public saftey. Technical or otherwise.
What are you thoughts, on what interoperabilty means or how it should be used in public saftey. Technical or otherwise.
Interoperability is not a technology, it is a state of mind.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Opinions on this? I know it works.
Radio Interoperability|Repeaters|Cross-band Communications|New Communications Solutions
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.
Yep got couple of em, they work pretty darn good! Make sure you get the Delay box for every radio that is trunking though.
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.