NWI public safety agencies cope with radio upgrade costs

• Reprints

Lake County Sheriff's Department patrol officer Nikolaos Zairis radios in the license plate number of a car pulled over for speeding in the St. John, Ind. area. in February of 2011. Local law enforcement agencies are working towards meeting a federal mandate for narrowband radio frequencies. | File Photo~Sun-Times Media

Article Extras

Updated: March 19, 2012 8:02AM

The state-mandated consolidation of 911 dispatch centers isn’t the only financial challenge facing public safety agencies.

They are also racing to meet a federal mandate to upgrade radio systems by Jan. 1, 2013, something that requires new radios, regrammed radios and for some, changes in their broadcast towers.

In 2004, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that all public safety and business industrial land mobile radio systems in the United States must switch from 25 kilohertz technology to 12.5 kilohertz. According to the FCC, migration to the 12.5 kilohertz technology will allow additional channel capacity within the existing radio spectrum, thus supporting more users.

Since then, police and fire departments in Lake and Porter have been purchasing radios and walkie-talkies that are 12.5 kilohertz compatible, but the hard part comes next.

Reprogramming a department’s radios can cost between $40 and $100 per radio.

Still, the larger cost could come on communications towers. For example, Portage Fire has two channels at Station No. 3 that are at the same height — 80 feet. Because that can cause interference in the narrowband radio channels, the city may have to shell out as much as $100,000 to raise one channel higher.

Public safety agencies have applied for some federal grants to defray the costs, but the pot of money available is dwarfed by the number of agencies that still need to make the transition.

A few members of the U.S. House of Representatives proposed legislation that would extend the mandate deadline until Jan. 1, 2015, and provide more federal grant money, but so far the bill has stalled.

The narrowed bandwidth can result in a 3-decibel loss in signal strength, which can affect how well an agency communicates across a city or county.

Portage Fire Chief Tom Fieffer said that’s a concern particularly as counties consolidate their 911 dispatch centers, which is mandated by the state.

“At the county dispatch meetings, we’ve talked about it,” Fieffer said. “We should be almost there, but I think we’re still in the infancy.”

Making the switch

The Lowell Fire Department is one of the few local departments to have made the switch to narrowband, and Fire Chief Clint Gorball said the experience has gone well.

“About four or five years ago, we made the switch,” Gorball said. “We haven’t noticed any problems with signal interference or strength so far.”

Gorball said that the department saved money on the reprogramming end because they had an employee who could do the work.

“We purchased the software for the upgrade,” he said. “It’s a little bit cheaper than hiring an outside vendor.”

Gorball estimated the changeover cost the department under $1,000.

Lowell Police Chief John Shelhart said that the Fire Department’s experience with the transition has eased some concerns about whether narrowbanding would affect communications with other departments.

“We contacted them when we were getting ready to start this process,” Shelhart said. “We didn’t know if it would interrupt ocmmunications, but it obviously hasn’t.”

Shelhart said his department is filling out paperwork to change the licensing of the department’s radio channel (about $600) and getting an estimate on reprogramming the radios, which he expects to be in the neighborhood of $750 to $1,000.

Beyond public safety

Fieffer said the narrowbanding issue tends to focus on law enforcement agencies, but other city departments use radios on their own channels.

“The police are doing this at the same time we are, but the Street Department, the Park Department, the Water Department — every department in the city has radios,” Fieffer said. “That’s why it starts to be so costly for cities. Stuff just adds up.”

Mass transit agencies, public utilities and schools also may be subject to the mandate.

Larger departments like the Lake County Sheriff’s Department occasionally serve as backup channels for other departments — since it has a wider span on its frequency. But Chief of Police Dan Murchek is concerned that if county police switch to the narrowband before other departments, it could affect communications.

“As soon as we do narrowbanding, it will make it difficult for departments to talk to us,” Murchek said.

Since most of the county’s 200 radios are narrowband compliant, Murchek said the department is working to price out the reprogramming and other costs.

“It’s something we have to do,” Murchek said. “We’ll work through that, but it’s another mandate where the cost falls on each individual municipality.”