Project 25 scanner receives FCC certification

Sep 18, 2002 12:00 PM

In a step that allows Uniden Corporation of America, Fort Worth, Texas, to sell its digital capable receivers, the FCC has granted certification approval for the company’s Project 25 hand-held and base/mobile scanners.

The company unveiled its digital scanner line, including the Bearcat BROADCAST250D hand-held and the BC785D base/mobile, at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. FCC certification gives the company approval to market the units.

"Our customers expressed a desire for a Uniden APCO-25 product, and we are pleased to be able to offer our new Bearcat BC250D handheld and BC785D base/mobile scanning unit," said Scott Carpenter, Uniden product manager. "With the ability to monitor conventional, trunked and APCO P-25 conventional and trunked systems, these models are state-of-the-art radio scanners."

Project 25 is a joint effort of federal, state and local governments, with support from the Telecommunications Industry Association, to develop a universal digital standard for land mobile radio communications. The P-25 suite of standards enables critical communications for safety and security agencies around North American and allows interoperability among the different agencies.

The new scanners offer 1,000 channels, 10 banks and a frequency range of 25–1300 MHz. The BC250D comprises all of the features of Uniden's market-leading BC780XLT in a handheld model, plus an additional 600 channels. Users of both models must purchase an APCO P-25 card, the BCi25D, separately. All models will ship in late November 2002.

"We expect more big cities to migrate to the APCO P-25 digital technology, like Los Angeles did this past year, to ensure agency interoperability among police, fire, EMTs and the like, and we believe that news organizations, businesses and consumers will want to monitor these signals," Carpenter said.

Uniden officials said that its digital scanning technology gives users the ability to monitor the unencrypted day-to-day activities and signals of standard city and government service departments, but does not allow users to monitor encrypted signals from national and local security organizations or any type of cellular transmissions.

Uniden also said that it plans to market scanner programming software, called E-Scanner software, which will allow users of Uniden scanners with data ports to program frequencies into channels and banks of their scanners.