Cash-strapped public-safety agencies adopting non-P25 technologies with increasing frequency, NPSTC says
What is in this article?
Cash-strapped public-safety agencies adopting non-P25 technologies with increasing frequency, NPSTC says
In addition, local governments’ communications investment decisions often are driven by the needs of the larger government enterprise, Lenihan said.
“There are cases where a municipality doesn’t want to build two systems,” he said. “They’ve got a police and fire department. They want their trash trucks, public works and parks-and-recreation [personnel] to be on the same radio network, for economy of scale, and they get sold a digital system that won’t interoperate with federal, state agencies or larger agencies around.
“I think that’s how they’re making their way into public safety—a municipality may just basically bundle all of their services onto one radio system.”
NPSTC has not conducted a survey to determine how many public-safety agencies are adopting non-P25 technologies, but anecdotal evidence clearly indicates that the trend is occurring, with first-responder agencies migrating to NXDN, DMR and MotoTRBO systems in states like Kentucky, Florida and Georgia, Lenihan said.
“We’re gradually being fragmented after herding all of the cats to P25,” he said. “As the life cycles of the systems time out, it’s looking more like people are choosing a variety [of LMR technologies].
“Quite frankly, the responder doesn’t necessarily care which technology [is used]. It just has to be reliable, resilient, and it has to work.”
In addition, a growing number of critical-infrastructure entities—for example, utilities, airports and transit authorities—are opting for non-P25 digital radio systems, including TETRA, Lenihan said.
Meanwhile, the impact of push-to-talk-over-cellular (PoC) already is impacting the enterprise space and potentially will influence the public-safety and critical-communications arenas as FirstNet is deployed and mission-critical push-to-talk (MCPTT) offerings become available during the next few years, Lenihan said.
“I think, in a lot of areas, push to talk over LTE is going to have a dominant role in push to talk, because of the coverage, the density of sites and the reliability of it,” Lenihan said. “People are going to get comfortable with it. Even if it is not mission critical, I think there is going to be a behavior shift, once they use it for a period of time without fail.”
While non-P25 usage is a growing trend for rural and cash-strapped public-safety agencies, Lenihan said he does not believe it will become an issue in metropolitan areas in the near future.
“I think the big municipalities have already made the investment in P25, so that’s pretty much entrenched,” Lenihan said. “It’s going to be the small towns that are isolated by distance and maybe don’t interact with adjacent towns and cities on a regular basis … they’re going to take care of their own needs.”
This small-town trend to non-P25 technologies is impacting larger agencies’ purchasing decisions, because the larger agencies are buying non-P25 subscribers to ensure that their first responders can interoperate with smaller agencies in mutual-aid scenarios, Lenihan said.
“The pressure is that [the larger agencies] either buy radios that will work with your mutual-aid partners, or you somehow encourage [smaller agencies] to buy P25 radios,” Lenihan said, noting that having the larger agency buying the less-expensive non-P25 subscribers is often the more practical option.
Clearly, the manufacturers
Clearly, the manufacturers have created a situation where their product is so expensive, that only with federal funding can it be reasonably purchased. The reason for this is the availability of federal funding. Years ago, manufacturers had to make and sell radios at a price that a county sheriff office could afford. Now they can charge what they want and the government will often make up the difference. Now, P25 users are painted into a corner. of not being able to afford their own radio systems. Big Govt strikes again!
Amen. Industry, in the radio
Amen. Industry, in the radio world, dictates the market. Narrow-banding, digital formats, etc. It should be the other way around. Don’t blame the users for rebelling where they can. Narrow-banding was the worst thing that’s happened to LMR. It may have been needed in coastal states or high population areas, but in the other 70 percent of the country, it should have been implemented on an as-needed basis or ignored altogether. In middle America, their aren’t enough LMR systems/users to warrant it. Had our elected officials stood up for us, instead of being in the pockets of special interests, the situation everyone is in would be just a bad dream.
If you look at the big radio
If you look at the big radio manufacturers websites, you can tell that utilities, like I work for as a consultant, have been totally forgotten. They don’t get the big public safety bucks, so forget about them. Gone are the days when a company like that was happy to sell you a new repeater or a few mobiles. Now if its not a multimillion dollar federally backed purchase with a big support contract to go with it, you just hear “Click-Dialtone”!!!
The equipment is surely too
The equipment is surely too expensive and then the Mfg’s discount it on state contract or GSA to the point that the local dealers (the few of us that are left that do all the actual grunt work everyday with public safety agencies) make such a small profit it is often not worth pursuing. And have you tried to program P25 radios? It is a night mare – they are loaded with dozens of zones with 100’s of talk groups that the local suburban or rural volunteer firefighter would struggle to use even in the extremely rare incident of a “wide area responder” event. The feds, the states, and biggest cities have forced a standard (under mother Moto’s direction via APCO) that the rest of the “fly over” country can’t live with – all at tax payer expense. And now we are seeing that they can’t even afford to maintain what they already built out without more and more local fees / taxes added to our home owners and businesses. As we start to move public safety to PoC on LTE with FirstNet and Verizon, etc., the LMR side will slowly dissolve as agencies simply refuse to replace their broken or old P25 radios. Today you could buy 2 brand new NXDN/DMR digital radios for the the cost of repairing a single P25 unit. Back when “interoperability” was the big buzz word, with very good intentions, little did we recognize it was really just a new sales and marketing program. In real life the P25 interop standard is still much more myth than fact. The die is cast and “P25” will be the answer to a trivia question in 20 years.
One reason for the high cost
One reason for the high cost barrier in the universal adaption of P25 technology is directly related to how the funding and money has flowed in this process. There are many successful models, worldwide, of how a common digital platform/protocol was implemented as a “national standard” and is in the hands of almost all agencies. These involved much more involvement of a centralized funding and standards source. The bulky approach of how this has been attempted in the US is really a good example of a worst-case, only because the funding for these systems was generally scattered, inconsistent and unreliable.
To understand the reason for the high cost of the infrastructure / subscribers it really goes back to how the recovery of the appropriate development and minimal revenue costs are being obtained. With P25 systems this is mostly through equipment and subscriber sales and not through federal support directly to R&D for the manufacturers participating in supporting this standard.
The missing link on this was really a stronger bond between the funding sources, in this case they are federal and big city resources and the manufacturer. Very little went into the initial investment of the development of the public safety grade equipment to offset the costs, so the result was and still is a high cost to the end users. As it stands now, development and research costs are still placed back into the manufacturers hands with revenue to pay for this coming from sales.
I would propose that a shortcut to the funding sources is found, so that the middle points that handle the funding are reduced or eliminated so that the funding can make a more direct route to the manufacturers doing the work. Each layer now adds additional costs, including the government agencies handling the funding.
Would it make sense to structure a NASA type organization to address digitally trunked Public Safety LMR communications services using P25 and managing funding past this point, if P25 is really the digital trunking system standard that Public Safety wants to fully adopt (not wholesale replacing other LMR’s but as a selective resource to use for applicable interoperability)? Isn’t this what we are doing with FirstNet? Since voice communication standards/services are still a way off for FirstNet, do we need a stronger supported to attempt to standardize the use of P25, and find a way to make it a more affordable system, that are only being obtained from tax based resources? Maybe minimizing the number of hands handling the funding and taking off a group or two that are really doing nothing more than making sure the bucks get passed around will help get the costs down.
$8000.00 for a portable radio is really a hard thing to swallow and justify for supporting reliable, safe communication models, especially when the direct replacement for a broken subscriber is in the hundreds of dollars.
As one who has just been
As one who has just been introduced to LMR and P25 networks for less than a year, I have come to understand understand some of the cost associated with both the subscriber and network equipment. My hope is that the both the P-25 and LTE technology can find a happy medium in which to co-exist. Most of my background has been working with carrier networks with a deep understanding of both PoC and legacy PTT systems.
Larger cities are working with surrounding municipalities to help reduce some of the expenses and at the same time boost their networks for the time being. Eventually the benefits of operating a highly adaptable LTE network will be realized. Not just with reliable voice communications, but with cost savings in day to day operations and a more robust network with more nodes that should overlap if one fails.
Cash flow models for all public safety equipment makers will find that the market has gotten a lot larger with the introduction of a national player. It will be interesting to see the results in ten to fifteen years.