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Agencies readying new radio system

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JANESVILLE — Rock County public safety agencies are spending more than $4 million to upgrade radios and other communications equipment in response to a federal mandate.

The Federal Communications Commission hopes to squeeze more use from the radio spectrum by cutting some frequencies in half, including frequencies used for public safety agencies, said Dave Sleeter, Rock County communications center director.

But because narrowband radios have less range, the county’s 911 communications commission decided to go with digital equipment instead.

The result is better performance but a higher cost, Sleeter said.

For some small agencies, the extra expense will be a challenge.

In Footville, the fire department wouldn’t have needed to spend a dime on new equipment to convert to narrowband, but the decision to go digital requires the department to buy new equipment, Chief Joe North said.

His department wasn’t able to land any grants, and money for radios will have to come from the vehicle replacement account.

“We’ll just have to wait on stuff we’d normally replace,” he said.

He plans to sell about 20 of his analog radios to New Glarus for about $2,400.

His department needed 35 new radios and 12 pagers for a cost of $46,000, he said.

“It’s an awful big burden,” North said.

Digital upgrade

The federal government announced the switch to narrowband more than a decade ago. To prepare, Rock County, Janesville and Beloit hired consultant GeoComm to study what changes to make to meet the narrowband mandate, Sleeter said.

It was estimated about half of all radios used by Rock County public agencies would need to be replaced to meet the narrowband requirement, and every radio would need to be reprogrammed at a cost of about $65 each, he said.

The county’s cost to upgrade infrastructure for conventional narrowband—not digital—would have been $250,000.

Narrowband radios have less range, so county officials worried more receivers, possibly up to eight, would be needed to pick up the weaker signals in rural areas, he said.

But it wouldn’t have ended there, Sleeter said.

At some undetermined date years in the future, the FCC plans to further narrow the frequencies, essentially halving the narrowband again and further weakening signals from radios using the narrower frequencies.

If the county at that time still was using an analog system, it would need to build an additional transmitter and double or triple the number of receiver sites, he said.

One transmitter could cost about $500,000, while the equipment for each receiver would be about $40,000, plus tower or land costs.

Instead, the county’s 911 communications commission, which is made up of administrators from police, fire and EMS departments across the county, decided to spend $1.9 million now to switch to a digital system, Sleeter said.

Local police, fire and EMS agencies will need to buy radios to match.

Upgrading to digital will fix another lingering problem—interoperability. Beloit, for example, now uses UHF radios, but the rest of the county uses VHF, meaning they can’t easily talk to each other.

Janesville Police Chief Dave Moore said going to narrowband without going to digital would have presented a radio communication problem.

“Our coverage now is somewhere between reasonable to marginal. If that is to diminish to any degree, that would be a public safety issue,” Moore said.

Going digital doesn’t fix all the problems, however.

Edgerton, for example, responds to calls in Dane County, which is going to a digital trunking system—a step above Rock County’s plans. Edgerton agencies that want to be able to talk to Dane County officials must buy even more expensive radios, Sleeter said.

Municipal departments such as public works and utilities also must meet the narrowband requirement or upgrade to digital. Sleeter said some cities still are deciding if they’ll buy digital equipment, while cities such as Beloit have budgeted $1.65 million over two years for digital equipment for every department.

Timeline

Infrastructure improvements for the digital conversion should be done by the end of 2011, Sleeter said. The county is spending about $1.9 million to retrofit existing analog towers.

Agencies are buying equipment now and should have it installed by the end of March, he said. Starting in April, agencies one at a time will start turning on their digital equipment for testing.

Sleeter hopes the system will be “pretty well along” by late summer 2012.

By Jan. 1, 2013, all of the county’s operations must be off wideband.

Rock County is ahead of most communities in meeting the federal requirement, Moore said. He credits Sleeter with the foresight to give municipalities two years to plan for digital communications.

Police, fire and EMS agencies are at various stages of buying equipment. Some still are waiting to hear if they’ll get grants. Others have the new equipment in hand.

Funding

Evansville Fire Chief Terry Wendt isn’t expecting to hear until March or April if the department received a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant.

“If that falls through, we’re going to have to go to our budget and hopefully have enough to cover (the equipment),” he said.

The upgrades will cost about $95,000, he said, and his equipment will need an additional chip to communicate with Dane County officials.

Wendt plans to work with his vendor to get the radios in time regardless of the grant, but the department might hold off on buying all of the radios if they don’t get the grant.

Town of Turtle Fire Chief Tim Huffman said he heard more than a year ago about the digital conversion, so he applied and received a FEMA grant.

His department needed 36 new radios at a cost of $44,000. He has all of the radios, which are programmed and ready to go, he said.

What do I do as a consumer?

Most consumer walkie-talkies should not be affected by the federal mandate that requires agencies to start using narrowband radios in 2013, the owner of a local radio communications business said.

Radios bought at big box stores should be narrowband, Steve Bandt, president of Bandt Communications in Janesville, but he has seen equipment sold as late as 2003 that wasn’t narrowband.

Consumers with questions about whether their equipment is wideband or narrowband should call the manufacturers.

Businesses that have licensed radios—such as construction contractors or bus companies—are affected by the federal mandate, but most of the equipment they use already has narrowband capability, he said.

Bandt services the Janesville School District radios, which will need to be reprogrammed next fall. Because people have known about the impending mandate for more than a decade, Bandt said everything he’s sold since 1996 has been compatible with narrowband.

Those who bought radios 20 or 30 years ago and haven’t done anything to them would need to buy new radios to comply with the law, he said.

If they continue using the radios after the law changes, the radios might be subject to more interference, and users could face hefty fines from the Federal Communications Commission, he said.

The FCC might task radio providers such as Bandt with enforcement, making it illegal for companies to service older wideband radios, he said. That issue is undecided.

People who enjoy listening to Rock County scanner traffic at home will need to buy a digital scanner. New digital P25 scanners range from $300 to $500, said Dave Sleeter, Rock County communications center director.

Some fire and EMS paging still will be heard on analog scanners, but new digital scanners also have the analog capability, he said. Analog scanners also would need to be reprogrammed to the narrowband, he said.

Gazette reporters Ann Marie Ames and Catherine W. Idzerda contributed to this story.