Anyone got an answer as to why towns choose to put their schools on a DMR system and not just give them their own talk group on the P25 trunking system they use for PD/FD/DPW?
P25 is priced to maximize the separation of tax dollars from the taxpayer. DMR is marketed at ‘business’ who are trying to minimize overhead costs.Bunch of different reasons.
Subscriber/infrastructure cost, grant restrictions, and good old fashioned politics immediately come to mind.
A less common answer is features/functionality.
And that's the point, right? Not just if it can do something, but how it does something. Public safety agencies throw around a lot more "mission critical" requirements than the schools which is also a tax-funded entity. Seen plenty of public safety agencies demand high availability/redundancy for non-core and seriously under utilized functionality which just helps contribute to system cost. Also I wonder what a coverage test and site engineering for a schools project looks like compared to the public safety system.Pretty much DMR can do most everything P26 does... except securely sore AES keys
The state system only became robust enough to add more users about a year ago and since then they have added almost a dozen new services, so they are well on their way
And thus is the most difficult problem, and why you don't see a lot of P25 in CT, but also see FDs rolling around with racks of various subscribers from different vendors all covering different things.No county form of government.
P25 is priced to maximize the separation of tax dollars from the taxpayer. DMR is marketed at ‘business’ who are trying to minimize overhead costs.
Pretty much DMR can do most everything P26 does... except securely sore AES keys
Public Safety systems in general have far more stringent requirements than commercial systems. The coverage requirements are much different if you need 95% in building coverage as opposed to 95% coverage for vehicles. Other than private ambulance services in my area, I see almost no portable radio use. The oil delivery guy doesn't need to be able to talk back to dispatch from the basement of a house. OTOH, the police and fire do need that sort of coverage.
The P25 standard was developed by career public safety communications officials to meet the needs of public safety. No doubt, Motorola and all of the other two way radio manufacturers had input, but it was APCO that took the lead. That's why P25 is an open standard (but not open source) commications standard.
If you applied the coverage standards of P25 public safety to DMR, the cost difference wouldn't be that much.
I believe the availability is there. If they care to take advantage they may do so. I believe it’s probably a lot cheaper than paying for a new trunked P25 system. Especially if they have to build out a 700 MHz or 800 MHz system from scratch. The added receive sites alone add substantial costs. But there are others who can afford to own their systems outright, and for various reasons, like it that way. But I don’t know, there very well may be a “push” by the state to join and help defray the costs of the statewide system, I’ll let those more knowageble on the subject field that one. I can tell you the Town of Avon planned their own trunked system but ran into difficulties when an antenna site owned by the Town of Canton would not allow in increase in height. Avon did, or currently is looking at the statewide system. I’m not sure but a couple of days ago I heard a trooper or radio tech on the dispatch #1 TG out of the Litchfield Barracks refer to Huckleberry Hill Rd in Avon. Just a guess but I’d say Avon is still investigating the possibilities of using the statewide system. I say this because the road mentioned is where they have always experienced poor reception in the past. But then again, it could merely be a trooper following up on a case and the address just happened to bring him to Avon.Good question... I want to add, is there a larger plan to move all municipal LE, Fire etc. to the CLMRN?
They are doing that already, but the state system only became robust enough to add more users about a year agoNot going to solve the world's problems in a RR forum thread, but I think most people wish they could see CLMRN do what some states have done which is if they want to be a primary user and have in building coverage they get the locality to contribute to system build out to make up the different from what the state requirements are and what the locality would need.