Oct 14, 2002 12:00 PM, Don Bishop

Cobb County, Ga., has reported interference to its 800 MHz trunked, simulcast radio system.

Tracy Roberts, the radio system manager for the county, said in a written report that the county police department had complained of a lack of radio coverage at the intersection of Macland Road and Lost Mountain Road.

The report said that a representative from a service shop visited the location and performed “a basic radio check, which failed.” The service rep found a cell site nearby and, using a spectrum analyzer, found that the site was “generating 4 megs of data.” The report identified the site as “either a Nextel or Verizon wireless site.”

A source close to the county government said that the interference report is so fresh, it is too soon to draw conclusions about the cause.

“We have some things that we suspect are the possible cause of the interference,” he said.

“But to say it is the cell site is still theoretical. We have started connecting the dots with the cell sites that might be offenders. The evidence is circumstantial. We will know more after we get with the engineers from these companies and get more details about what their sites are possibly doing to us,” he said.

Although he said the interference is not extremely serious—“just some annoyance”—he said “whenever you have problems with public safety communications, it raises a flag.”

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