Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Re: dumb edacs

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 13:10:16 -0400

-------- Original Message --------
   From: "Pete Fiorey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: dumb edacs

Ladies and Gents, I seldom say anything in this forum as there are many more
eloquent speakers than I.  And I learn every day from the discussion
herein. However, on this Honolulu Issue that Doug brought up, I would like to add
my personal viewpoints. I spent two years under contract with Com-Net Ericsson
(now M/A Com) managing that Honolulu network. I was at the Mayor's EOC during Y2K
and was involved in detail with the Police and Fire Departments there. I am not a
M/A Com apologist, but I do think that the information here about Honolulu is, at
best, "mis-information". The Honolulu network is a 19 site digital voice trunked
800 MHz network with a combination of Simulcast and Multi-site sub-networks. The
network serves almost 6000 users. On my watch, we did indeed, have two significant
outages - one caused by microwave failure and another caused by a central switch
card failure. In both cases, the failures were limited in scope so that the police
never did loose the ability to communicate via radio. This is an inherent aspect
of a good trunked system design - a single failure does not cause total network
failure. In both cases, the Police, the City and the manufacturer were all highly
cooperative and quite genuine in the understanding of who, what, when, where and
why of each incident. The news media, however, were not so cooperative. In another
instance, a situation occurred wherein a person in police custody died. The radio
system was blamed - "no coverage" or "inconsistent coverage" at the situation
location. We checked out the entire network with the City and Police, took sites
off the air, and could not make the individual radios fail at the location of the
situation. Turns out, the police requested that the emergency buttons on all the
radios in the fleet were set for a 1-1.5 second delay to limit the number of false
emergency declarations over the control channel. The individual officers were not
trained to the point where they realized , when under stress, that they needed to
hold down the emergency button for 1.5 seconds. Based upon this and other
"incidents" and "complaints", M/A Com and the City developed the following: - User
group for all Police Precincts and special units (allows for excellent exchange of
information and issues between the LMR users, the managers, and the manufacturer).
Painful at first, but in the end, an indispensable tool for improving the issues
of trust and performance. This sort of initiative is an absolutely essential part
of making a large scale telecommunications network of any kind work well. -
Significant retraining exercise so that all LMR users were given refresher
training (an initiative welcomed passionately be the rank and file police
officers) - Major initiative to add one or two repeater sites and several BDA's to
cover known areas of low or no coverage - Transition from original AME radios to
IMBE Pro-Voice radios to improve the quality of voice transmissions - major
initiative to assist the city in a complete maintenance review of all radios in
the fleet (many of the radios had not been maintained in over a year and were
seriously out of spec - creating apparent coverage and performance issues well
beyond the capability of the manufacturer to control - even if the total network
and all 19 sites are perfectly tuned and performing perfectly, an out of spec
portable or mobile will make the whole network appear totally non-functional to
that individual radio user). I personally worked with the manufacturer, the Police
Union, the Police Management, the City Management, the news media, and most
importantly, the cops on the street. The net result of the combined work of all
the above was a much improved operational environment. The company, and local
engineer, currently providing those same services to the City of Honolulu is an
excellent services company - and for EDACS maintenance and engineering. I foresee
no letdown in vigilance of support or performance. Further, the EDACS network did,
indeed, provide a good level of interoperability. The Police were operating on the
800 MHz trunked network. The Fire Department was operating on VHF Conventional. We
used the EDACS Network Controller (IMC) to link the Fire Dispatch and channels to
the Police Dispatch and channels very nicely. Nothing magic, just good technicians
making use of the technology available. Unless I am grossly misinformed, P25 would
not have in Honolulu, and will not ever, solve the problem of different users
working on multiple frequency bands. In that case, P25 is neither a solution or a
detriment - it is just irrelevant. A switching solution was - and still is -
necessary. Is the Honolulu network perfect - absolutely not. Is it a failure or a
piece of garbage. Again, absolutely not. So, when Doug mentions: "you MA/COM guys
have missed the boat... entirely.

your "provoice" solution is good - i've heard the audio quality...

but i also talked to the officer in Hawaii that had one of your
fine radios... needless to say, he wasn't very kind about the
"usability" of your system.... he mentioned that it goes up and
down like a yo-yo .... multiple dispatch problems .... site failures
that bring the whole system down... etc..." I suggest that perhaps Doug is not
getting the full picture. I would also suggest that, in my experience, every
trunked radio system on the planet has similar issues and you will find at least
one user (such as the ONE mentioned here) that is not satisfied. Again, I am not a
M/A Com apologist. I just pass on my personal experience for your consideration on
this one point. And I am totally accountable for my
information. Respectfully, Pete FioreyFrontier Systemswww.frontier-si.com