Subject: [NEXTEL-1] New technology for FDNY radios

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2004 13:42:41 -0400

New technology for FDNY radios
BY WILLIAM MURPHY
STAFF WRITER
May 30, 2004

The Fire Department has ordered new technology that will make emergency
buttons on firefighters' radios more accessible, officials said
yesterday.

The distress button will be moved from the body of the radio, which is
carried at the waist and inside a heavy protective coat, to an outside
hand mike clipped near the firefighter's chin.

The change is a tacit admission that the radios, Motorola model XTS3500,
were designed for police and not firefighters, according to the fire
unions.

Fire Department spokesman Francis Gribbon said yesterday that the new
microphones were on order and will likely be delivered by September.

The emergency button on the radio was deliberately placed on the radio
itself so that police officers in trouble could discreetly set off a
silent alarm, according to several people familiar with the radio's
design.

The Fire Department said that the new radios, which cost $14 million and
exhibited transmission problems within a week of being sent out in the
field without testing, were taken out of service in March 2001.

One firefighter in Richmond Hill almost died when he ran out of air and
sent a distress message on his hand microphone that was not heard by
firefighters around him, but came through clearly on radios of
firefighters blocks away.

The Fire Department said the new radios were in storage during and after
Sept. 11, 2001, until Nicholas Scoppetta became fire commissioner in
January 2002 and ordered them reprogrammed and back in service.

The XTS model was put back in service a month after Scoppetta's order,
and the 15-year-old Sabre model Motorola radios that were in use on
Sept. 11 were taken out of service.

But the department's problems with the entire radio system are far from
over. Motorola confirmed earlier this year that it was going to
discontinue production of the XTS3500 model, meaning the department will
soon have to search for the next generation of portable radios.

Motorola has been marketing its next generation of radios, the XTS5000,
to emergency service agencies around the country.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
http://www.newsday.com/technology/ny-nybutt303824852may30,0,6208854,print.story?coll=ny-technology-print

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