So, what IS going on?
WISCOM "launched" last year, April 1 if I recall right. Perhaps that date was prescient...
I had expected at least some users to start populating the system in December in advance of the narrowbanding mandate - that hasn't happened on any sort of scale, as far as I can tell.
I also find it interesting that there are very few state users on this state system, namely the relative absence of the WSP. A few simulcast TGs for a couple of posts, that's it.
Someone got excited a few months back and added a slew of TGs to the database, but many of these appear to be notional only.
(Side note, it would be nice if TGs *confirmed* in use could be noted as such.)
If you go to the WISCOM website, you won't see any new documents, nor will you see any new calendar events.
All of this begs the question, what's going on here? While this wasn't a super-expensive system,* it's quite puzzling that it hasn't seen more use (yet). In Wisconsin, there has been some level of mistrust between the state and local authorities over the years, is this a factor here? Is there something fundamentally wrong with the system that's not been publicized?
Or, has the system always been designed to be slow-rolled? It hasn't seemed that way - like a lot of other people here, I listened to the techs hustle to have the system up and running.
This is interesting, to say the least. I've followed several state-wide systems as they launched and typically there was A) a major launch user, such as the state and B) pent-up demand and folks migrated ASAPractical. Not here.
Sixtytwo
* You really can't compare WISCOM to ARMER, STARCOM21, SAFE-T, MPSCS, DTRS, MARCs et al. It's a low-capacity system, not only in the number of talkpaths but also in overall capacity as it's VHF. Many of those other systems were also designed to encompass major metropolitan areas and to supplant current systems, not the case for WISCOM.
