Florida county chooses Johnson for SmartZone mobile radio order
Palm Beach County, FL, has placed an order worth $406,000 for series 7780 and series 9800 mobile radios from the E. F. Johnson subsidiary of Transcrypt International, Lincoln, NE.
The mobiles will be used on the county’s 10-site, 28-channel simulcast Motorola SmartZone trunked radio communications system. Mark Filla, the 800MHz system administrator in the county’s Communications Division, said that the system received final acceptance in August 2001 with the successful migration of the Sheriff’s Office to the system.
“The system already has over 2,000 users from the county, and the number is expected to reach 4,000 by the end of next year,” Filla said. “That doesn’t include municipal users. We’re adding municipalities to the system gradually, one by one, as they may choose to participate in the program.”
Filla said that the county expects to continue to buy radios from both Johnson and Motorola, the only two suppliers of SmartZone equipment. Each county department makes purchase choices based on its own radio requirements, the feature sets offered by current models, and the available funding.
“We have a price agreement with both manufacturers, and they’re competitive. For this particular purchase of lower-tiered radios, the size of the Johnson unit, the inclusion of an alphanumeric display and the 250 talk groups in the Johnson unit vs. 48 talk groups in the comparable Motorola unit were among the reasons we chose the Johnson product,” Filla said.
Michael E. Jalbert, Transcrypt’s chairman, said that the company’s SmartNet and SmartZone products are helping the company to increase its penetration of state and local government markets.
David L. Hattey, Johnson’s president, said that manufacturing products for Motorola’s and Johnson’s own proprietary systems and for open standard systems expands the company’s ability to provide products to a larger number of governmental agencies.
Johnson designs, manufactures, and markets conventional and trunked radio systems, land mobile radio repeaters and mobile and portable radios, including Project 25 digital radio products, for public safety, commercial and government customers.
