November 13 2017 - by Zerg90 at gmail.com
STIPULATIONS - (harumph!)
Public safety radio systems in the USA are a real smorgasbod or hodge podge. Perhaps the USA would be a better place if there was a nationwide radio plan for public safety agencies.
1. Most 'on duty' public safety workers now have a portable radio. (probably 99%)
2. Most volunteer / on call fire and most volunteer / oncall ambulance staff have pagers. Sometimes the pager can also function as a two way radio.
3. All public safety vehicles have a mobile radio. Nearly all. Maybe 99.99%
4. Typical radios (mobiles and portables) have 16 channels minimum. They also have PL / DPL and they have NAC if digital. (PL and NAC prevent hearing interference - in general).
5. Radios operate on low band (40 Mhz), high band (160 Mhz), UHF (460 Mhz), and 700/800. Each rado typically can only operate in 1 band.
6. Radio systems can range from 1 channel systems to 1,000 channel systems.
7. Many newer radio systems are using 'trunking'. 'Trunking' is entirely different than the previously popular 'conventional' (non trunked) systems.
8. Public safety radio systems are used by local, county, state, and federal agencies. Plus private ambulances and disaster relief organizations etc.
9. Aircraft operate in the 125 Mhz band. Trains operate in the 160 Mhz band. Ships operate in the 156 Mhz band.
10. Cities typically operate their own radio systems. In suburban and rural areas, it is typical for county and regional radio systems to be used.
11. In the West, the federal wildfire agencies have extensive radio systems throughout the mountains, deserts, and rangelands. These radio systes are in the 170 Mhz band.
12. There is a new nationwide initiative called FIRSTNET. This system is tasked with bring relieable LTE / broadband service to public safety agencies.
13. In the last 20 years, the FCC has set aside some channels to be used for "Interoperability". These are basically "disaster" channels that only see use when the big one hits.
14. In the past 5 years the FCC mandated the narrowbanding of the 160 Mhz band and the 460 Mhz band. Many new radio channels were created - and many are still unused at this time. There has been no federal initiative to expand the use of these channels - nor to standardize their use. They have been implemented in a helter skelter manner.
15. Most agencies have a primary dispatch channel - and perhaps 1 to 5 auxiliary channels. There is a hodge podge of radio frequencies in most public safety radios.
16. Very few public safety employees are radio experts.
17. Radio and communications costs are not major items in most public safety agency budgets.
18. There are many more facets to this topic. The highlights have been listed. Now lets get to the solution.
PROPOSED SOLUTION TO THE MESS
It will probably take 10 to 20 years for the FIRSTNET system to be implemented nationwide. In the mean time - lets do this.
For 8 or 16 channel radios -
A. All radios shall have at least 1 nationwide Interop channel - 155.7525 or 453.2125 or 851.0125 or 769.24375
B. All fire/ems radios shall have at least 1 nationwide fire / ems channel - 154.28 or 462.95 or 851.??? or 769.8375
C.All police radios shall have at least 1 nationwide police radio channel - 155.475 or 460.??? or 851.??? or 770.39375
D. All dispatch centers shall continously scan all of these channels 24/7/365
[ E. All vehicles should have to capability to scan all of these channels also - but that would be a huge undertaking - and it would directly conflict with all the new FIRSTNET radios that have to be installed.]
F. There should be satellites in orbit that can broadcast on all of these channels. This would allow instantaneous broadcast of EAS messages to all public safety units in the USA.
G. These simple steps will bring nationwide alerting (and command and control) to the entire USA. These simple steps will also bring common onscene channels to every public safety agency in the USA (because the nationwide channels can also be used as local common channels)
H. The other channel slots in the radios can contain the local operating channels. If the radio has a 2nd bank or zone - then all of the Interops channels can be loaded.
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MY TRAIN OF THOUGHT
President Trump orders that all ambulances in the USA should respond to Washington DC. EAS message goes out via satellite. All units respond to Washington DC. They switch to their Interop channel while enroute. (154.28 or 463.95 or whatever). When the 500,000 ambulances arrive in Washington DC, they will all be listening to 154.28 or 462.95 etc. The IC can tell them which channel to swith to or where to pickup a cache radio. Now we have 500,000 ambulances on 2 or 4 channels in Washington DC. Versus the current system in which we would have 500,000 ambulances on 500,000 different channels. Pick your poison. Or come up with a better plan smart guy.
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Interops Channels
VCall / Vtac - approx 30 simplex channels
Federal wildfire - approx 20 channels - probably should be made available nationwide instead of just in the western USA
NTIA (federal) VHF Interops Channels - 5 repeater pairs at 169 Mhz
NTIA (federal) VHF Police Interops channels - digital - approx 5 repeater pairs - (many agencies do not have digital radios yet)
UHF NTIA (federal) interops channels - 406 Mhz - most local public UHF radios cannot operate in this band
UHF NTIA (federal) police channels - 406 Mhz - digital - most local agencies dont have digital radios and cant access this band
UTAC - 4 repeater pairs at 453 Mhz - plus there are 20 repeater pairs at 463 Mhz that are mostly unused in the rural areas (and in many urban areas also now)
ITAC - 5 repeater pairs at 851 Mhz
700 Hz - approx 80 repeater pairs - the 700 Mhz band is new in the USA for public safety usage
As you can see - if a public safety radio has a 2nd bank for Interops Channels - the UHF and 800 radios would have very few interops channels to utilize - one solution might be to allocate the 463 Mhz channels as nationwide fire/ems interops channels in rural areas