Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Public-safety radios short of antenna towers

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 13:07:29 -0400

Public-safety radios short of antenna towers
By Andy Nelesen
[email-masked]

While cities across the United States are reporting interference
problems between public-safety radios and cellular phones, Brown County
has been spared the static.

However, that doesn’t mean local radio systems don’t have their own set
of issues. The biggest problem: Not enough antenna towers.

Brown County Public Safety Communications Director James Nickel said
there are identified trouble spots in the area, most of which are
symptoms of a shortage of tower sites.

The radio system — parts of which are approaching 30 years old — is hard
pressed to support the proliferation of portable radios (read
walkie-talkies) in use.

The system “wasn’t designed for some of the things we are asking it to
do,” Nickel said.

Low-wattage, hand-held radios often have trouble generating a strong
enough signal to penetrate concrete or brick buildings.
Mobile radios — mounted in squad cars and fire trucks — occasionally
have trouble being heard in some areas around the county. The area
around the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay campus is one example.

Another problem — prevalent in the outlying areas of De Pere — is that
the city has expanded beyond the area covered by existing radio
antennas, especially in the southern part of the city.

“We have holes in our coverage,” Nickel said. “That is a known problem.”

Nickel said the De Pere problems will be patched with remote receivers,
devices set up to pick up signals from the weaker hand-held units. The
bigger problems will require area municipalities to invest in a new
system.
County officials have started to look at what a new system will entail.

The lengthy process has just started, but Nickel said he hopes a new
system could be operational around 2006.
“We’ve changed what our objective was 20 years ago,” Nickel said.

“Our communities have grown. Even with the system we have, we don’t have
adequate coverage.”
Nickel said the process is in the initial stages — with experts looking
at what users want the radio — and associated data system — to do.

“They start like an architect does with a building,” Nickel said.
Nickel said the new system would need to improve coverage and expand
functionality, considering the advances of the digital age.

One of the main goals will be the ability to have multiple agencies talk
to each other during regional emergencies.
In October 2001, Brown County merged several area dispatch centers into
one agency — the group that Nickel heads — and dissolved dispatch jobs
within individual departments. The move joined radio systems — some of
which were antiquated — into one facility.

A consultant recently estimated the price tag for a new radio system at
between $14 million and $16 million. Funding for the effort has not yet
been discussed.

“We’re at the beginning of that process,” Nickel said.

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/news/archive/local_15590853.shtml

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