County changing frequency band on radios
It is a huge change and yet many people will never know ithappened.
Most public safety agencies across Columbia County this week areundergoing a change in their radios from wideband to narrowbandoperation – a change required by the Federal CommunicationsCommission.
The conversion requires reprogramming more than 1,000 radios andpagers used by fire departments and law enforcement and EMSagencies that will continue through the end of this week.
“It takes a long time for every radio in the county to getreprogrammed,” said Pat Beghin, Columbia County EmergencyManagement Director.
The switch to the narrower frequency band has been a long time incoming; the FCC announced the requirement in December 2004 thatradios operating under 512 MHz – primarily public safetyorganizations like police, EMS and fire departments – to move from25 kHz to the 12.5 kHz narrowband voice channels by the end of2012.
“Any department that uses radios is going to have to look atswitching at some point in time (this year),” Beghin said. “It hasto be done by Jan. 1, 2013.”
The move allows more efficient use of the spectrum, creating moreavailable channels without increasing overall bandwidth.
“There’s a shortage of channels out there for people to use,”Beghin said.
Columbia County, under the sponsorship of the Portage FireDepartment, secured in March an $831,000 grant to help with thecosts of the conversion, including the purchase of new radioequipment – with any radio more than 10 years old likely needingreplacement – and reprogramming existing equipment.
The grant has helped with the purchase of 320 pagers, 199 portableradios, 34 mobile radios and 14 base radios, Beghin said.
“It won’t cover every radio everyone has in the county” but goes along way toward the costs of the conversion, Beghin said.
It was the grant’s deadline of March 1 this year that promptedColumbia County’s conversion this week.
“We’ve put a lot of time into it … to make sure we haveeverything covered,” Beghin said.
The one department not being converted this week is the ColumbiaCounty Highway Department, which has radios in more than 100different pieces of equipment.
“Winter time isn’t necessarily the best time for them,” Beghinsaid.
Also putting in a lot of time to help agencies with the conversionare technicians with Communications Service in Portage, whichservices Motorola radios.
“We probably service about half the departments in the county,”said Steve Dubberstein, president of Communications Service.
The conversion requirement has not caught local agencies bysurprise; with the announcement in 2004, they have had years toprepare, and many obtained grants to help with the purchase of newradios, Dubberstein said.
“The key to the narrowband is you have to have the radios ready andthe system ready,” Dubberstein. “I don’t know any county right nowwhere this is a major issue … It hasn’t been a big financialburden all the sudden. They mandated it so far in advance, it sortof fit in the process (of obtaining new equipment over the years),”Dubberstein said.
Still, this week represents a “frenzy of work,” according toDubberstein.
“All six of our field people are doing that pretty much exclusivelythis week,”Dubberstein said.
Other Wisconsin counties that have already converted theiroperations to narrowband include La Crosse and Fond du Laccounties, Dubberstein said.
“Columbia County has done a good job in planning this,” Dubbersteinsaid.
If everything goes well, no one should be able to tell thedifference in operation, according to Beghin, not even otherneighboring agencies that have not yet converted to narrowbandoperation.
“Probably the only thing when that occurs is narrowband(operations) tend to be a little quieter when getting switched,”Beghin said.
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