Some of the things that come to mind about iDEN systems that aren't favorable for emergency services work (IMO) are:
1. Unless you establish separate, isolated networks for exclusive use by emergency services, you are going to be competing for airtime with everyone else using the system. Then the medic calls for police backup when the patient's condition-causer comes back and shoots up the neighborhood more.. only the medic can't get through because some bunch of idiots are jamming the bandwidth, compiling a song on their iDEN phones going "Where you at?!" non stop.
2. Ruggedness/design. I'm aware there are some non-phone-shaped larger devices; the local transit department uses the mobile radio version, and we have a mobile/base unit in our services' basement (looks startlingly like an MCS2K with a handset attachment, hmm!). Nothing I've seen yet even comes close to either a) taking the kind of punishment they'd see in fire/EMS use, or 2) fitting the appropriate design required for quick use in emergency services. If I'm wrong and someone has taken, say, an XTS chassis and thrown an iDEN format radio into it, then I admit I'm wrong. But until you make a radio look and function like a radio, you're going to have firefighters and medics and others who will resist it/be confused by it/etc.
3. Why change? My department is using an 800mhz P16/P25 (however you wish to call it nowadays) 3600bps trunked radio system, and far, FAR from its full potential. Why screw with something that works? Ideally, I'd like to get all the departments in the area on that same abovementioned system, but right now, we have a handful of departments on conventional UHF, some on conventional VHF, one on an MPT1327 radio kludged into the Motorola Centracom setup, another two on a VHF-to-satellite (!) conversion, and yet another coming in on VHF connected to the trunk system via a SmartBridge between two mobiles - one VHF, one 800. My point is, adding iDEN to this is just another system that has to be kludged in. There are already a number who can't talk to one another due to the wacky setups in place (ever tried to patch a talkgroup to either an MPT1327 resource or a satellite radio channel?) - replacing it with iDEN (or adding it, in a 'less worse case') will just mess things up. Like someone on here says in their .sig, "Analog already is interoperable."
Last year after some of our district chiefs' cellphones met untimely ends due to their 'duty cycles' (read: they were beat to crap day in and day out), they demanded more 'rugged' phones and were given MiKE phones (Canada's version of NEXTEL/iDEN) to try out. The phones were returned and removed from service at the end of the trial period and we simply bought new conventional PCS phones - they just aren't suited for emergency operations.
1. Unless you establish separate, isolated networks for exclusive use by emergency services, you are going to be competing for airtime with everyone else using the system. Then the medic calls for police backup when the patient's condition-causer comes back and shoots up the neighborhood more.. only the medic can't get through because some bunch of idiots are jamming the bandwidth, compiling a song on their iDEN phones going "Where you at?!" non stop.
2. Ruggedness/design. I'm aware there are some non-phone-shaped larger devices; the local transit department uses the mobile radio version, and we have a mobile/base unit in our services' basement (looks startlingly like an MCS2K with a handset attachment, hmm!). Nothing I've seen yet even comes close to either a) taking the kind of punishment they'd see in fire/EMS use, or 2) fitting the appropriate design required for quick use in emergency services. If I'm wrong and someone has taken, say, an XTS chassis and thrown an iDEN format radio into it, then I admit I'm wrong. But until you make a radio look and function like a radio, you're going to have firefighters and medics and others who will resist it/be confused by it/etc.
3. Why change? My department is using an 800mhz P16/P25 (however you wish to call it nowadays) 3600bps trunked radio system, and far, FAR from its full potential. Why screw with something that works? Ideally, I'd like to get all the departments in the area on that same abovementioned system, but right now, we have a handful of departments on conventional UHF, some on conventional VHF, one on an MPT1327 radio kludged into the Motorola Centracom setup, another two on a VHF-to-satellite (!) conversion, and yet another coming in on VHF connected to the trunk system via a SmartBridge between two mobiles - one VHF, one 800. My point is, adding iDEN to this is just another system that has to be kludged in. There are already a number who can't talk to one another due to the wacky setups in place (ever tried to patch a talkgroup to either an MPT1327 resource or a satellite radio channel?) - replacing it with iDEN (or adding it, in a 'less worse case') will just mess things up. Like someone on here says in their .sig, "Analog already is interoperable."
Last year after some of our district chiefs' cellphones met untimely ends due to their 'duty cycles' (read: they were beat to crap day in and day out), they demanded more 'rugged' phones and were given MiKE phones (Canada's version of NEXTEL/iDEN) to try out. The phones were returned and removed from service at the end of the trial period and we simply bought new conventional PCS phones - they just aren't suited for emergency operations.
