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Despite cost challenges, Project 25 is a great option
As FirstNet mulls what its nationwide broadband communications network ultimately will look like, a couple of critical questions keep popping up: Will the network be able to deliver mission-critical voice at some future point? If it does, will that spell the end of land mobile radio systems (LMR) in the public-safety sector?
Many people have opinions on these questions, but no one has a definitive answer. Meanwhile, one thing seems perfectly clear: Project 25 (P25) digital radio technology delivers, whether the need is performance, interoperability or both, according to panelists during an educational session conducted last month during the International Wireless Communications Expo (IWCE) in Las Vegas.
"In public safety, if you want to play with your neighbors, you almost have to be P25," said Tom Sorley, deputy director of radio communications services for the city of Houston, which turned to P25 technology when it sought to replace four legacy systems that had reached end of life.
But Sorley initially encountered "some resistance from the technical folks," who preferred staying with UHF analog conventional technology.
"The problem with that is that you can't do modern policing without enough capacity — you have to be able to divide these groups up," Sorley said. "It is very, very difficult to do that with anything other than a digital trunked radio system — and if you go into the digital trunked world, you need to go Project 25."
RELATED VIDEO: P25 questions still ahead
There was another compelling reason, according to Sorley.
"Quite frankly, we funded our system primarily out of grants, and it [P25] was a requirement to get the grants," he said.
Performance was a key factor in the Missouri Department of Public Safety's decision to leverage P25 when it built out its statewide wireless interoperable network (MOSWIN), said Steve Devine, interoperability program manager.
"We knew that a lot of our constituents were going to be folks in rural areas that, at the time, were operating wideband [systems], and we timed our system completion to be right at the FCC's narrowbanding [deadline]," Devine said. "A lot of people went from having one or two channels wideband to narrowband, and they were going to lose coverage — we know the laws of physics, and there's no way around that.
"But they were able to come onto our system for a lesser dollar amount than it would have cost them to actually narrowband and lose part of their existing footprint," he continued. "The radios were more expensive, certainly, but they perform better, especially in a lower-signal-strength environment. That was a big part of it for us."
RELATED VIDEO: Devine on P25, interoperability
Cost remains a significant barrier to entry for P25 technology, despite the fact that interoperability was supposed to foster competition, which in turn was supposed to drive down the price points for subscriber units.
"Let's not kid ourselves — cost is a huge factor in this decision," Sorley said. "I have local volunteer fire departments calling up every day and saying, 'Can you give me some way to talk to you on an analog, because I can't afford to buy a $5,000 radio?'"
That's why it is vital that agencies keep an open mind and not set their sights on a particular vendor when procuring P25 radios, according to Sorley.
"Project 25 gets better and more affordable when we hold true competitive procurements," he said. "I see this so many times: I was involved in one, somewhere in the Northeast, where they asked me to come in and help them with their RFP … because they couldn't figure out how to write it to get the vendor that they wanted.
"After I figured out that's what they were doing, I said, 'Thanks but no thanks,' because to me, you have to have competition."
Another way to drive down costs is to do some research, according to Bradley Stoddard, director of the Michigan Public Safety Communications System.
"Reach out to your counterparts across the nation and ask them, 'What was your price?'" Stoddard said. "Tom [Sorley] and I talked a couple of years ago, and we understood what the pricing was in his backyard, and we used that as an argument to get our manufacturer to reduce its prices."
To manage costs long-term, Missouri officials made a key decision, according to Devine.
"As a policy, the state of Missouri is a multiband environment," he said. "We have 115 counties, and 85% of our population lives in 15 counties, while the other 15% of our population lives in 100 counties — so we are your classic rural-urban dichotomy.
"We've already determined that there is no more VHF spectrum in Missouri — we've used just about every piece that we can find. … So, our system was designed on the premise that, eventually, dual-band subscriber units are going to be what allows somebody to roam from 700/800 [MHz] to VHF trunking. That's not to say that we're not allowing single-band radios that you already own, but our grant dollars are really being focused toward what's going to promote that 12- to 14-year lifecycle of that radio."
Next: More challenges
The Jury for this area is in.
The Jury for this area is in. For terms of coverage, cost and interoperability, the best answer is, and has been for decades; analog FM technology. In this area, public safety acquired P25 products, tried them out, and then had them converted back to narrowband analog mode. Nuff said!
Congratulations Missouri –
Congratulations Missouri – You’ve now forced your subscribers to pay enormous amounts for radios.
P25 should not cost $5000 per radio. There are options other than, say Motorola ($2500-$7000 per P25 radio) that in terms of quality are equal if not better. Its amazing how pricey radios can get when a company has to cover the high cost of their lobbying efforts to win business instead of focusing that money on producing an affordable, high quality product.
The vendors still just don’t
The vendors still just don’t get it and obviously neither do the managers of many public safety radio systems throughout our country. P25 is still too expensive to purchase and still too expensive to maintain even though there is competition in the P25 market place. Yes, grants are available to purchase and install P25 equipment and systems with many agencies stepping out on a limb to implement systems simply because the federal grant money is there, but they don’t take the time to find out the true total cost to purchase and maintain these systems three to four years out. Many are finding out the hard way maintaining a P25 System is going to cost them three to four times as much per year as it did to maintain their analog VHF or UHF System(s). In the analog world one could put a radio in service and never have a tech touch it for several years, but this is not true in the digital world. Digital radios must be on a preventative maintenance schedule and be tested at least once every year to make sure the radio has not drifted off frequency, has proper output power, proper audio level settings, etc. because digital radios are less forgiving than analog. If your local or State government is considering the purchase and installation of a P25 System please do your homework to investigate all costs associated with the purchase and maintenance of a system and get all the facts before you have someone sign the contract. I know it seems like “the right thing to do” when it comes to switching to P25, especially since grants are available to cover the majority if not all of the costs to purchase and install a system, but please take the time to find out all costs associated with a purchase of this type so it doesn’t come back to haunt your agency financially two to three years from the time the system was originally installed.
Until you can duplicate the
Until you can duplicate the fidelity of wide band FM analog audio, manufacturers can cram their RF pollution. These systems are going to get people killed. Also, why do local law enforcement agencies feel the need to hide behind full time encryption? What are they afraid of? It’s inexcusable.