Florida city to interoperate with counties via upgraded 911 center, P25 radio system from Motorola Solutions

All of this was done as part of a $6.5 million project for the city of Pensacola. Primarily by sharing a network core with Escambia County—an entity that has a P25 system that operates in the UHF band—the project cost was almost $1 million less than it would have been if the city purchased its own core, Unruh said. Escambia County also shares this core with Santa Rosa County, which has a 700/800 MHz TDMA system, he said.

By teaming together, the three entities all realize benefits, according to Randy Johnson, a territory vice president for Motorola Solutions.

“The beauty of this is that the city of Pensacola, Escambia County and Santa Rosa County are all on an interoperable radio system,” Johnson said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “For all of the first responders, the interoperability is going to be very seamless.

 “There are tremendous cost savings to the counties and the city by going this route and sharing resources. The beauty of it is that interoperability is much, much better at a lower cost. We’re really proud of that, and we know that the users are, too.”

Alexander said he is hopeful that the shared-resources approach used for this project will result in future upgrades to the systems being conducted on a time basis.

“I believe that we—the county and the city—will be able to move forward in the future with upgrades that will benefit everyone,” Alexander said. “Because we’ll all have a mutual interest, I think it will make working these things out a little more of a priority, as opposed to [saying], ‘Let’s see how long we can delay, because of the costs.’

“When you can save a million dollars, that’s something that I think all elected officials like to hear—especially when you can save millions of dollars. I think it really set in motion even a better future partnership.”