Subject: [NEXTEL-1] MPSCS- Monroe County Moves Closer to Upgrading Public Safety Radio System

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2004 23:35:16 -0500

Monroe County Moves Closer to Upgrading Public Safety Radio System
Federal Funds Covering Most of Costs for new Motorola system

MONROE, Mich. - 4 March 2004 - Monroe County has moved a step closer to
significantly improving public safety for county residents by signing a
contract to join the Michigan Public Safety Communications System
(MPSCS), the statewide digital two-way radio system operated by the
Michigan State Police.

Monroe County law enforcement and other emergency response personnel
will purchase about 1,025 Motorola mobile and portable two-way radios on
the MPSCS. Three towers will be constructed in the county to ensure
public safety coverage for all residents. The U.S. Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) is providing $6 million for the Motorola public
safety communications system for Monroe County.

“We have an antiquated public safety radio system here,” said Monroe
County Sheriff Tilman Crutchfield.  “This new system represents a
dramatic improvement in our ability to protect and serve the citizens of
Monroe County.”

The MPSCS is among the most advanced public safety radio systems in
North America. The system, which replaces the Michigan State Police
radio system originally installed in the 1940s, provides 97-percent
mobile coverage across the entire state. Most important for public
safety, all police, fire and emergency response personnel with radios on
the system can speak with each other regardless of where they are in a
county or the state. Called “interoperability,” federal homeland
security officials favor public safety radio systems that allow multiple
emergency response agencies to communicate with each other.
“We are a border county, so communications between our neighbor counties
and our neighbor states is critical, especially at a time when we must
do everything to shore up our homeland security,” Sheriff Crutchfield
said.

Monroe County was nominated by Gov. Jennifer Granholm to compete for
FEMA funding for the radio system. FEMA encouraged regional
interoperability and resulted in awards to 17 of the 50 applicants from
across the country.

The MPSCS is designed and built by Motorola. To date, 374 federal,
state, county and local police and government agencies in Michigan are
operating more than 12,000 radios on the MPSCS. Work on finalizing the
locations for the Monroe County towers is nearly complete. Once built
and tested, the Monroe County portion of the MPSCS is expected to be
operational by this fall.

State Police are pleased that the MPSCS has operated and performed
exactly as designed. In her Jan. 27 State of the State speech, Gov.
Granholm said the MPSCS “was the only public safety radio system in the
state that performed flawlessly and continued to provide uninterrupted
communications” during the massive Aug. 14, 2003 blackout that shut down
power across the northeastern United States and Canada.

“Monroe County’s decision to join the MPSCS will enhance public safety
services to the citizens of the region by improving the communications
capability of first responders,” said Michigan State Police Lieutenant
Colonel Tom Miller, who oversees the radio system within the agency. “We
have seen these results first hand in jurisdictions across the state
that have joined the system. In the interest of public safety we are
pleased Monroe County has made this decision.”

# # #

Media Contact:
Sheriff Tilman Crutchfield
Monroe County, Michigan
734-240-7400

Steve Gorecki
Motorola, Inc.
847-538-0368

Fact Sheet

Important Features of the Michigan Public Safety Communications System
(MPSCS)
The Motorola ASTRO® SmartZone Digital System is among the most
technologically advanced two-way mobile radio systems available in the
world.

The system meets APCO (Association of Public-Safety Communications
Officials International) Project 25 standards for public-safety
communications systems. Radios manufactured by different vendors to
Project 25 standards will work on the system. A consortium of
public-safety organizations created Project 25 standards. Their goal was
to ensure that users of compliant digital systems could count on a
number of standard features and capabilities regardless of the system’s
manufacturer. One of the most important features is system
interoperability.

The system supports interoperability between public safety and public
service users of the system.
Interoperability improves emergency response and helps manage costs.

The system has the capacity to support state and local needs and
facilitates planning on a scale that was never possible before to serve
all of Michigan’s state and local needs today and into the future.

Based on the needs of the State Police, the MPSCS is primarily a mobile
radio system. That means it uses 35-watt radios permanently mounted in
vehicles to achieve its maximum coverage performance. Other radio
systems are designed primarily for portable coverage, using
lower-powered, 3-watt, hand-held radios.  These systems often have more
towers or antenna locations to achieve maximum performance. Still other
systems are designed primarily for paging, such as those used by many
smaller fire departments. Agencies with unique portable coverage
requirements may add additional infrastructure to the MPSCS to meet
their communication needs.

The Motorola system is designed to provide mobile radio coverage in 97
percent of the entire landmass of Michigan.

Motorola has installed 181 radio tower sites statewide to provide a
robust communications system for the protection of citizens and law
enforcement officers. The vast majority of the towers were built on land
already owned by the state. None of the towers were installed on
wetlands.

The system features 64,000 separate "talkgroups," which means that there
is ample capacity for state or local agencies that would like to be on
the system.

# # #
http://www.motorola.com/mediacenter/news/detail/0,,3943_3313_23,00.html

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