Thanks for your interest. I have subscribed to this forum for some time now, as I am interested in any communications activity in the state. I am a ham (W3MW), a former paramedic instructor, and do indeed have a scanner which I bring with me on my travels. In discussing the system, it is important for all to realize that the system was selected by the public safety end users themselves after an exhaustive multi-year evaluation process. During the year-long evaluation, agency representatives dedicated over 8500 hours of their time to evaluating the functionality, reliability, performance, and vendor references to come to their recommendation without dissent or controversy.
I am always surprised to hear the claim that this architecture is not a "public safety system", without qualification as to what that means. Does it mean "not yet deployed in a public safety setting"? This architecture is deployed, in use, in Orange County CA for their Transit PD. No other manufacturer's integrated digital voice/data system is deployed anywhere at all. Does it mean "not suitable for public safety use"? The requirements for a system to be considered "public safety usable" can be listed, discussed, and passed to the vendor community for their response. This was done here, after several years of extensive research and discussion, by the end users themselves; and the system selected meets or exceeds all of the public safety requirements placed on the system by those end user agencies. Both the procurement document, and the selected vendor's response, are available by request from the Department of General Services.
I will tackle your comments and questions as best I can:
1. APCO did attempt to establish a trunking "standard", but has not yet succeeded. APCO P25 trunking is not complete, and does not appear to be headed to completion in the near future. More importantly, attempts at showing interoperability between different manufacturers of "trunked P25-compatible" equipment have failed (see Delaware).
Perhaps as importantly, P25 may have been technically passed by. I have heard it compared to an attempt to standardize the ISA bus on a PC now, despite the development of PCI interfaces, etc.; do you downgrade the performance of the system to accommodate the (manufacturers') standard, or do you provide the end user with the reliability and safety features they need? P25 is a really neat ISA buss system; would you buy it?
P25 in non-trunked (or conventional) mode is relatively stable and well-defined; this system is P25-conventional compatible for interoperability with other users' systems.
2. See M/A-COM's website at www.macom.com/opensky.
3. The system will be constructed primarily in the 821-824 MHz NPSPAC frequencies, with some county and utility partners using 806-821 MHz commercial frequencies.
4. The same system architecture and hardware is deployed with FedEx nationwide (over 25000 users) and in Orange County, CA, for a mixed transit and transit police system. The FedEx system, in particular, is networked over an extremely wide area and has proved to be very reliable. It is the largest wide-area, digital, trunked system in operation in the US, and may be still the only one in wide-area operation (Florida having severe system problems and Michigan still under construction). Several other systems are in the proposal or contract stage. At least one PA county (Cumberland) is in the process of purchasing an OpenSky system off state contract.
5. The existing VHF system(s) are incapable of carrying their agencies' current traffic. Even within PA, no unused VHF channels are available for expansion. The existing base stations, towers, generators, microwave, and shelters are mostly over 25 years old and at the end of their useful life. Add to this the discontinued production of low-band equipment by all the major manufacturers, and the unavailability of spare parts for the existing equipment, and you have a recipe for disaster for the end users.
As it turns out, the primary cost of building a network (statewide or countywide) is the supporting infrastructure (towers, shelters, generators, roads, electric service, fences, etc.), NOT the electronics. That cost is in turn driven by the tower sizes and heights required. Most users are used to the concept of high towers on high spots, to get the best impact from this cost. The cellular folks have developed the concept of low power, low profile tower sites. This approach is significantly less expensive while providing better coverage, higher system capacity, and more redundancy.
6. In addition to the above; As part of the four-year state evaluation process, we quoted rebuilding the entire PSP VHF system, alone, without any expansion or including any other agencies. That cost alone was over $150M; almost two-thirds the cost of a multi-agency system. Add to that the need for several other agencies (PDOT, DCNR, Game, Turnpike, Attorney General) to replace their own existing systems. Doing nothing except in-kind replacement ends up costing four to five times as much, over the same time period, and leaves the users with no improved coverage, no data capability, no interoperability, no GPS, no emergency signaling, no vehicular repeaters, etc., etc. The decision really is quite clear and easy.
-----Original Message-----
From: JGLN3LWT@aol.com [mailto:JGLN3LWT@aol.com] - Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2000 10:06 PM - To: wpascanner@onelist.com - Subject: Re: [wpascanner] Does anyone know...? - From: JGLN3LWT@aol.com - Mr Appleby: - With all due respect, and your reply to this forum is quite curious, I have a couple of questions: 1) Didn't APCO meet in Pittsburgh several years ago to develop digital and communication standards for public safety signaling and communications? Correct me if I'm wrong, but should this project be APCO-25 compliant? The City of Philadelphia has voted for this standard to the tune of $51 million. If this project is not APCO compliant, why not? 2) Who will manufacture the radio equipment? 3) What frequency band is the system to use? 4) Where else is this system deployed, as I have never heard of MA/Com or Tyco Electronics? 5) Couldn't the existing system be enhanced by adding more sites for better coverage, and something like cellular packet, or dedicated 800Mhz channels for data terminals, GPS, vehicle cameras, etc? 6) What is the primary reason to abandon the exisitng VHF system? Your input is valued and appreciated. Jim in Pittsburgh N3LWT
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