Public-safety personnel utilizing the regional P25 network for the Downriver Mutual Aid (DMA) district in Michigan have been pleased with the coverage and flexibility provided by the VESTA Radio system from Airbus DS Communications during its first year-and-half of service, according to a DMA official.

Since the P25 system went live in November 2013 (when Airbus DS Communications was Cassidian Communications), first responders in the DMA district—serving 16 communities south of Detroit with a total population of 300,000—have expressed support for the new 800 MHz network, said Bob Heck, system administrator for DMA.

“After they received their handsets, I have gotten a lot of great feedback from them,” Heck said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “I haven’t had any real complaints since the day we rolled it out. Our coverage is good, we’re happy. We just recently did an upgrade on the repeaters, and it was flawless—it seems like the Airbus folks really know what they’re doing.”

Indeed, the DMA P25 system has 100% portable coverage, which was a major reason why DMA officials opted to have the district build its own LMR network instead of joining the statewide radio network that guaranteed only mobile coverage, not portable coverage, Heck said.

“One of our concerns was that our prior system had great portable coverage, and we wanted to be sure that we had the same kind of coverage when we went to the new radio system,” he said. “The state of Michigan system may have provided a lot of portable coverage, but we wanted guaranteed portable coverage, so that’s why we went this route.”

Indoor coverage was expected to be an issue for the P25 system, but that has not been the case to date, Heck said.

“We initially suspected that we probably would have to put some BDAs in there in some of these locations—we have a lot of auto factories here—but, as it turns out, we haven’t found any areas yet,” Heck said. “We’re always on the looking for them, but we haven’t found any areas yet that don’t have coverage.”

DMA officials also wanted the flexibility to upgrade the system on the district’s time schedule, as opposed to waiting on the state, Heck said.

“It was a hard decision [to build a separate P25 network], because the state of Michigan really has a good system—they do a good job,” Heck said. “But in the end, it came down to having some local control over our future and to be able to drive our own technology, when we see fit. That’s really why we went that way.”