PTIG panel at the recent APCO Show in Washington DC

Now you can have the Console of Choice for your P25 Radio Systemu

The Project 25 Technology Interest Group has selected Lexington Kentucky as the new Project 25 System of the Month.

Project 25 Technology Interest Group

P25 System of the Month

Lexington KY

Lexington, Kentucky Turns to P25 for Interoperability

For the first time in Lexington’s history, its public safety personnel—police, fire and corrections—can communicate seamlessly and effectively over the same radio system thanks to Airbus DS Communications’ VESTA™ Radio P25 land mobile radio solution.

Background

The project started in the summer of 2012 and cutover in the spring of 2014, replacing the 40-year-old VHF analog system and bringing much needed interoperability to the city’s public safety departments. Prior to installing its current solution, interoperability was out of the question. In fact, the only means for “interoperability” between departments was to place multiple radios in each police car and firetruck, forcing first responders to communicate through each department’s separate radio system.

Testing

Lexington’s new LMR system includes approximately 1,500 radios between Police, Fire, and Corrections users. The radios were tested in open fields, heavily wooded areas, city buildings, country farms, and even in the middle of rivers—all with strong, clear communication. The new network and equipment provide greater coverage and reliability over the legacy analog system, and exceeded coverage requirements of the initial plan.

“Having everyone on the same system and the ability to communicate at the touch of a button is a major leap for public safety,” said Robert Stack, Director of Enhanced 9-1-1 in Lexington. “Importantly, we were able to tailor the system to our needs.”

Collaboration and Open Procurement

With Lexington’s new P25 system, police, fire and corrections personnel—as well as the Blue Grass Airport—can effortlessly communicate across departments to collaborate. Even more, the open standards infrastructure provided Lexington the flexibility of open procurement. Open procurement meant that each agency could select the radio brand and model that worked best for them, instead of being limited to a single vendor. Ultimately through this process, Lexington built a seamless Project 25 system—and at the right price for each agency involved.

Thanks to VESTA Radio, Lexington is now a city unified under P25 LMR.

Link to a copy of the Lexington KY P25 System of the Month PDF file here

To find out how your P25 System can be nominated as a P25 System of the Month

Contact:

Stephen Nichols

Director Project 25 Technology Interest Group

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Below is an excerpt from the Mission Critical Magazine article:

"Open standards offer benefits that are difficult to overstate: freedom of choice for customers; lower overall cost of development, which is ultimately paid for by customers; vendor confidence that development can be re-used and refined; and freedom for both customers and vendors to focus on real issues including innovations that reduce costs and enhance productivity.  The results of our process check indicate that P25 standards are off to a great start, but require more investment, further refinement and full adoption.  These potential benefits materialize only if the standard is adopted extensively, not only by manufacturers but also by customers and the consultants who advise them. In the consumer world you can see many examples of standards that thrived because customers invested in products that used them. VHS succeeded over Betamax not because it was a superior technology, but because customers bought and invested in it first. Blu-ray won out over HD-DVD for more complex reasons, but ultimately customers only embraced Blu-ray. Cutting-edge technologies in their day, eventually both became reliable and inexpensive. But customer buy-in and acceptance was critical to continued investment and additional refinements by industry. No matter what the technical potential of a solution, adoption and economics drive its development and maturation.  Every technical person in every industry I’ve ever worked in believes at some level that their industry or organization has special requirements that just aren’t like anyone else’s and that they need a custom, special purpose solution. Technology is expensive to build, maintain and support.  Simply put, accommodating proprietary interfaces is more expensive than using one standard interface. Adoption enables our industry to expand its available offerings by leveraging the combined efforts of every vendor in the industry. That would mean that the wireline P25 standards — CSSI, ISSI and the Fixed Station Interface (FSI) — should be the only interfaces used for core P25 wireline communications, regardless of what vendor supplies the individual pieces of the subsystem, though manufacturers could continue to differentiate using proprietary extensions to the standards".

The full article can be found on the Mission Critical Magazine  link below.

http://www.mccmag.com/repository/files/Console%20Interface.pdf

The Project 25 Technology Interest Group (PTIG) held it’s Annual Meeting in conjunction with the APCO International Conference in Washington on August 16^th. At that meeting, a Board of Directors and Officers were elected. A number of New Board members were elected from the Public Safety Radio User Community to fill vacancies created as previous members moved on. These include:

• George Crouch who is the Public Safety Communications and Emergency Operations Administrator for the South Carolina Department of Administration, Division of Technology Operations. Mr. Crouch’s duties include administration of South Carolina’s Statewide 800 MHz Public Safety Radio System (Palmetto 800), communications interoperability planning, state coordinator for ESF-2 (Communications), and contract manager for the state’s communications. Mr. Crouch is the Co-Chair of the Project 25 Steering Committee
• Cindy Cast who serves as the Radio Systems Manager in the Information Technology Service Department, Radio Communication Services Division of Miami-Dade County, . She is responsible for activities associated with the management, maintenance, repair, and uninterrupted operation of the telecommunication radio systems, including the 800 MHz/700 MHz P25 trunked simulcast radio systems. The systems serve over 30,000 radio users.
• John Richards who is the Director of Radio Services for the State of Maine. He has been in that role since December of 2012. He manages Maine’s new P25 Public Safety Radio system. Previously he was Operations Manager for Yankee Communications in Benton Maine, a position he held for over 18 years.
• Eric Linsley who is employed by Mobile County, Alabama, Commission as the Director of Public Safety Communications. Eric is the Department Head in charge of all Mobile County Commission Electronic Systems. Eric is Chairman of the Region 1, Alabama 700 MHz & 800 MHz Planning Committee and local frequency advisor for Alabama.
• Tom Bowen who is the P25 Radio Network Administrator for Floyd County Government in Rome, Georgia. He is the Radio System Administrator for 2000 users on an APCO P25 based Simulcast network with 10 tower sites. It is a Public Safety network with the addition of public works and private agencies. Mr. Bowen also assists with Emergency Management rescue, CERT and amateur radio volunteers.

Other Radio Users returning to the PTIG Board include: Del Smith- Alaska ALMR, Brad Stoddard-State of Michigan; Brandon Diemer-BLM NIFC, Eric Davies- DHS; Karl Larson-City of Portland; Dean Hane MACC-911; and Jim Junkins-Harrisonburg/Rockingham VA.

The PTIG Board also includes returning Commercial Members including: Andy Davis-Motorola Solutions and TIA TR-8 Chair; Chris Lougee ICOM America and TIA PRS Chair, Jim Holthaus RELM and Chair TIA TR8.25 Compliance Assessment; James Reid-Harris; Cheryl Giggetts-AECOM; Neil Horden-Federal Engineering; Roy McClellan- Airbus DSC; Doug Chapman-Etherstack; Robin Grier-Catalyst; Sanjay Patel-IDA.

The PTIG Slate of Officers was also nominated and elected at the Annual Meeting. Chairman: Del Smith, Vice Chairman: Jim Holthaus, Treasurer: Chris Lougee, Secretary: Andy Davis. Stephen Nichols was appointed to continue as Executive Director for the non-profit organization.