North Carolina VIPER 800 MHz Statewide TRS

Here are some updated facts regarding the NC statewide 800 MHz TRS according to the September 2010 VIPER Newsletter.

• 239 total sites planned for statewide coverage: 153 sites constructed and on-the-air; 61 sites are fully funded and under construction; and 25 sites UNFUNDED.
• VIPER is 64% complete (number of sites) with 153 sites on-the-air
• VIPER infrastructure is 64% funded
• VIPER infrastructure remains to be 36% funded
• 49,800 Users are currently on the VIPER Network
• 214 Emergency Responding agencies makeup the 49,800 users
• SC has the same type Interoperable System; NC/SC can talk to each other using the same type user device.

Sites that have been activated to date:

Site County Site
1 Alamance Altamahaw
2 Alamance Cane Mtn
3 Alleghany Green Mt
4 Anson Wadesboro
5 Avery Linville
6 Beaufort Bath
7 Beaufort Chocowinity
8 Bertie Windsor
9 Bladen Elizabethtown
10 Brunswick Pea Landing
11 Brunswick Supply
12 Buncombe High Windy
13 Buncombe Meadows
14 Burke High Peak Mtn
15 Cabarrus Concord
16 Caldwell Butte Mountain
17 Caldwell Hi Britten Mtn
18 Camden South Mills
19 Carteret Newport
20 Carteret Laurel Road
21 Carteret Stacy
22 Carteret Kuhns PE
23 Caswell Yanceyville
24 Catawba Baker Mt Twr
25 Catawba River Bend
26 Chatham Chatham
27 Chatham Siler City
28 Cherokee Wine Springs
29 Cherokee Joanna Bald
30 Chowan Valhalla
31 Cleveland Shelby
32 Cleveland Boiling Springs
33 Cleveland Bens Knob
34 Cleveland Kings Mtn
35 Columbus Delco
36 Columbus Whiteville - TWC
37 Craven New Bern PE
38 Cumberland Cedar Creek
39 Cumberland Slocomb
40 Cumberland Fayetteville-TWC
41 Currituck Barco
42 Dare East Lake
43 Dare Bodie Island
44 Dare Rodanthe
45 Dare Kitty Hawk
46 Dare Buxton (US Cellular)
47 Davie Mocksville
48 Duplin Kenansville
49 Duplin Kornegay PE
50 Duplin Wallace PE
51 Duplin Chinquapin
52 Durham Camden Ave
53 Durham Cole Mill Rd
54 Edgecombe Tarboro
55 Edgecombe Dodge City
56 Franklin Margaret
57 Franklin Youngsville
58 Franklin Hosley Forest
59 Gaston Cherryville
60 Gaston Belmont
61 Gates Gatesville
62 Granville Butner
63 Granville Oxford BiCom
64 Granville Bullock
65 Granville Oak Hill
66 Granville Berea
67 Granville Oxford Water Tank
68 Greene Farmville
69 Greensboro A&T Univ.
70 Halifax Brinkleyville
71 Halifax Halifax
72 Harnett Cokesbury
73 Harnett Erwin PE
74 Harnett Spout Springs
75 Hertford Ahoskie
76 Hoke McCain
77 Hyde Ponzor
78 Hyde Rose Bay
79 Hyde Engelhard
80 Hyde Ocracoke
81 Iredell Mooresville
82 Iredell Barium Springs
83 Johnston Archers Lodge
84 Johnston Smithfield
85 Lee Tramway
86 Lenoir Seven Springs
87 Lenoir Kinston
88 Lincoln Anderson Mt
89 Macon Cowee Bald
90 Madison Big Knob
91 Martin Williamston
92 McDowell Grants Mtn
93 Mecklenburg Pineville
94 Mecklenburg - UASI Heathway
95 Mecklenburg - UASI Huntersville
96 Montgomery Buck Mountain
97 Montgomery Mt. Gilead
98 Moore Carthage
99 Nash Rocky Mount
100 New Hanover Wilmington
101 New Hanover Carolina Beach
102 Northampton Odom
103 Onslow Jacksonville
104 Onslow Holly Ridge
105 Orange Hillsborough
106 Orange Chapel Hill
107 Orange Laws
108 Pamlico Bayboro
109 Pasquotank Elizabeth City
110 Pender Penderlea
111 Pender Burgaw (NC53 East)
112 Perquimans Winfall
113 Pitt Greenville
114 Randolph Shepherd
115 Randolph Cole Ridge AAA
116 Richmond Ellerbe
117 Richmond Rockingham NCDOT
118 Robeson St Pauls
119 Robeson Proctorville
120 Rockingham Reidsville
121 Rockingham Wentworth
122 Rockingham Eden
123 Rockingham Mayodan
124 Rowan Faith
125 Rowan Salisbury
126 Sampson Newton Grove
127 Sampson Salemburg
128 Sampson Taylor's Bridge
129 Scotland Laurinburg
130 Stanly Albemarle
131 Stokes Sauratown
132 Stokes Booth Mt
133 Stokes Sandy Ridge
134 Surry Turner Mt
135 Surry Chestnut Ridge
136 Surry Elkin DOT
137 Surry Fisher's Peak
138 Transylvania Brevard
139 Tyrell Columbia
140 Union Monroe
141 Union Waxhaw
142 Union Wingate
143 Wake Wake County Simulcast
144 Wake Wake Forest
145 Wake Fuquay
146 Warren Manson
147 Washington Plymouth
148 Wayne Lee Plant PE
149 Wayne Goldsboro
150 Wilkes Pores Knob
151 Wilson Bailey
152 Wilson Wilson
153 Yancey Clingmans Peak

Up-Coming Site Activations through Q4:
• McFarland – Anson Co. Early 4th Quarter 2010 (October)
• Clemmons – Forsyth Co. 4th Quarter 2010
• Comfort – Jones Co. 4th Quarter 2010
• Riverdale – Guilford Co. 4th Quarter 2010
• Longarm Mountain – Haywood Co. 1st Quarter 2011
• Louisburg – Franklin Co. 1st Quarter 2011
• Margaretsville – Northampton Co. Changed to Old Mill 1st Quarter 2011
• Fain Mountain – Cherokee Co. 1st Quarter 2011
• Pisgah – Haywood Co. 2nd Quarter 2011

I will have more upcoming soon on this blog regarding the VIPER System.

Nine years later: Towers of Babble

From the The Virginian-Pilot, September 11, 2010
http://hamptonroads.com/2010/09/nine-years-later-towers-babble

A network that allows public safety agencies to communicate with each other remains one of the most elusive and pressing recommendations from the 9/11 Commission. Nine years after America was attacked, there's no guarantee that such a system will ever come into existence.

As The New York Times reported this week, squabbling over who will control a prime slice of broadband spectrum has left plans for a nationwide system literally up in the air.

The Federal Communications Commission has been pushing an approach that would have commercial companies buy and control the airwaves and build fourth-generation wireless networks on it. During emergencies, police and fire and emergency personnel would get control of the network, effectively taking over the airwaves to coordinate interagency communication.

Those public safety groups, however, insist such a network is unlikely to have the capacity needed during an emergency, meaning it could fail under heavy use and put lives at risk. They want exclusive control of the entire section of the spectrum, and they're lobbying Congress for it.
It has been six years since the 9/11 Commission issued its massive report, which included recommendations to improve the response to catastrophes on the scale of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

That makes the prolonged delay over divvying up broadband spectrum and developing a nationwide interoperable communication system all the more frustrating, particularly for commission members. Two years ago, after an FCC auction failed to draw sufficient commercial bids, the commission's vice chairman told The Washington Post: "I've lost patience... The slowness of this just indicates a lack of urgency and a lack of concern about human survival and human life if a disaster strikes."

The unhurried pace is indeed disappointing, especially given the urgency of the problem. During the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York nine years ago, first responders found themselves - for a variety of reasons - unable to communicate with each other. People died as a result.

There has been some progress that will help in future emergencies.

Today, many police and fire departments, including those in South Hampton Roads, use plain English on their radios instead of arbitrary, agency-specific codes.

They have developed interoperable regional systems and standard operating procedures to communicate during emergencies, and they've held joint training to prepare for hurricanes, plane crashes and other disasters.

Such changes have helped communities become better prepared, but each would be more valuable if they were part of a system that permits local, state and federal agencies from Virginia to Oregon to communicate and coordinate in a large-scale emergency.

Officials have said construction of the network could take as much as a decade. That means if Congress has any intention of seeing the system in place before the 20th anniversary of 9/11, it must act now to settle the debate over access to the broadband spectrum.

Cass County Minnesota Public Safety Freqs

If you live in Cass County Minnesota and need some scanner freqs check out the link below.

http://www.co.cass.mn.us/sheriff/pdfs/Section2.pdf

Radio issues reported nationwide - Communications problems might be endemic to digital systems.

On the Evening Sun website, Joseph Denilein has a story on public safety communications problems might be endemic to digital systems.

York County isn't the only place that has been having problems with a digital radio system.

Such systems have been failing from Virginia, to California to Canada, according to a weblog compiled by a California telecommunications entrepreneur that lists 79 links to different news reports and other documents concerning problems with digital radio systems. The reports, listed by Daryl Jones on his site blog.tcomeng.com, date back to 2002.

"There are a sufficient number of stories to establish reasonable doubt as to the suitability of these systems," Jones writes. "In fact, there is a clear pattern that would cause a reasonable and prudent person to entertain a strong and honest suspicion as to the suitability of this technology for mission-critical public safety radio communication."

See the rest of the copyrighted story at
http://www.eveningsun.com/ci_13277292?IADID=Search-www.eveningsun.com-www.eveningsun.com

Newcom Group PS Interoperability Bandplan

For my scanner friends in the north, here is the link to the Newcom Group Wisconsin interoperability bandplan, dated 6/16/2006.

http://www.ncwrpc.org/newcom/NEWCOM_Radio_Plan.doc

Monitoring the Republican National Convention

Thanks to the Gopher Amateur Radio Club ( http://w0yc.com/ ), you can now listen to St Paul and Minneapolis Police and Fire dealing with the crowds due to the Republican National Convention being in town at ScanAmerica.us by going to http://mn.scanamerica.us/index.php?county=Ramsey

Thanks to Gordon and the Live Scanner Audio newsgroup.

Overlay solution may be as close as near space

For many years now I have been a strong advocate for responsible use of the taxpayers money and radio spectrum when addressing the issue of interoperability in public safety communications. But since Congress first authorized the FCC to sell off a precious resource, the radio spectrum, we have had nothing but troubles and major headaches. I've always said follow the money and you will truly understand what is happening within Congress.

But those ill informed and communication illiterates in Congress continue to throw more taxpayer money into policies and systems that are not interoperable (i.e. the Florida Provoice statewide trunk system, uh deathtrap).

So maybe it is time for some fresh thinking. Instead of assigning more spectrum space (i.e. the 700 MHz fiasco), and put another radio on the fire truck or in the police car for the overworked firefighter or police officer to worry about, Congress should look at existing systems and see what can be done to improve that current situation. Now that would be the responsible thing to do instead of pushing an agenda that makes their political donors make more money, and adds more wasteful and shameful spending to the federal budget. But then again we are talking about Congress and they have yet to show any sign of being responsible.

So even though there are a few technical blunders in his article below, here is some food for thought by Donny Jackson courtesy of the MRT Bulletin:

By Donny Jackson
January 26, 2007

From a communications perspective, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was a real-life example of Murphy's Law: Everything that could go wrong, did. Not only did the storm's winds knock down a few towers, but even surviving towers were disabled due to the fact that many systems' electronics eventually were under water, lacked the power to operate, or did not have backhaul.

This unfortunate episode has forced everyone to re-evaluate the survivability and operability of communications systems, dealing with the question we all want to avoid: "What happens when nothing on the ground works?"

Probably the first alternative that comes to mind is satellite telephony from companies like Iridium. Certainly the satellite handsets were valuable in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, because the system does not rely on terrestrial infrastructure. When nothing else worked, they literally served as lifelines.

But the downsides of satellite phones are numerous. The service is expensive enough that some agencies won't be able to afford it, and handsets are pricey, so getting them into the hands of everyone who needs them can be difficult. More important, the current generation of satellite phones requires the user to hold the handset in a manner that maintains a link with the satellite.

For those working in a communications center, this isn't a big deal; for those out in the field trying to rescue people in far-from-ideal environments, it's a problem -- in fact, some first responders at Katrina chose to turn in their satellite phones rather than be frustrated by them.

It may be that the satellite phones are not as limited as some of the users indicated, because it's doubtful that there was a lot of time dedicated to training after the handsets were distributed. But there can be little argument on two points: first responders (and people, in general) prefer to communicate with the device they use on a daily basis, and the satellite phone technology available today is a decade old.

These points continue to nag me as we see various proposals to introduce broadband and interoperable communications systems nationwide. While most of them cite Hurricane Katrina as a reason for existing, only a few of these plans really address the need for non-terrestrial redundancy that will ensure communications exist when conditions bring even the most hardened terrestrial networks to their knees.

Where such redundancy is addressed, the typical solution is to overlay the terrestrial systems with satellite communications. On the surface, the strategy makes sense, but there are some practical problems.

Satellite phones require much larger antennas than those found on typical LMR or cellular handsets. That means first responders would need to carry an additional handset or a single handset that could communicate with both a terrestrial network and the satellite overlay network. Either way, we're talking about buying new handsets for everyone, which would get outrageously expensive.

Furthermore, the large investment associated with launching satellites dictates that they need to remain in use for at least 10-15 years to make economic sense. Proposals such as the one from Cyren Call recommend keeping this important communications system technologically "evergreen," but being tied to a single satellite technology for a decade would not seem to fit this vision.

An alternative to a satellite overlay is a system developed by Space Data, which uses weather balloons to suspend base stations in near space, 75,000 to 100,000 feet above sea level. Used for commercial vehicle tracking and in testing connected with U.S. Air Force communications, these balloon-supported base stations move very predictably at this altitude and can provide as much as 600 square miles of coverage, says Space Data CEO Gerald Knoblach.

Not only does the Space Data solution let users continue to use their existing handsets with no modifications, the base stations are brought back to earth when they reach the end of the coverage range and are launched again every few days.

"If you launch a satellite, you're stuck for 15 years with the technology that's in there the day you launched it -- and that's typically obsolete from the first day, because it took you two or three years to build a satellite and launch it," Knoblach says. "With ours, you can upgrade it every single day, so you can keep up with that Moore's Law path with consumer cell phones and electronics shrinking every day."

Space Data's solution is "typically 10 times lower cost" than satellite in a rural area and can be used to provide interoperability between disparate systems. In addition, the Space Data base stations are easy enough to deploy that additional balloons can be launched to provide extra capacity in a given area when it is needed.

Given these characteristics -- lower costs, no need to change existing handsets, interoperability capability, the ability to add capacity, and the flexibility to upgrade to new technologies in an ever-changing wireless marketplace -- the powers that be should give strong consideration to the weather-balloon solution when contemplating the best way to provide survivable communications redundancy.

E-mail me at djackson@prismb2b.com

Congress accelerates $1 billion in interop funds

Blog Editor Note: Congress continues its fleecing of the American taxpayer by allocating another $1 Billion of taxpayer money into this 700 MHz interop system fiasco. See the Monitoring Times website for more I have written on this golden fleece of the American taxpayer called, "700 MHz Interop."

Appears on the MRT website at http://mrtmag.com/news/policy/congress-interoperability-funds-121106/ (Dec 11, 2006 3:48 PM)

Written By Donny Jackson

Just hours before adjourning for the year, Congress approved a measure that calls for $1 billion in interoperability funds to be made available to public-safety agencies in 2007—probably a year earlier than the money would have been disbursed otherwise.

Introduced by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) as an amendment to the Call Home Act passed Friday night, the measure means public-safety entities can apply for the $1 billion in interoperability funds soon instead of waiting until after the 700 MHz auction—the funding source—is completed. Currently, that auction is scheduled is scheduled to begin by January 2008, according to digital-television transition legislation passed early this year.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will continue to oversee allocation of these funds, but many questions remain, said Yucel Ors, legislative director for the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO).

“From the way I read the bill, they have to parcel it out by Sept. 30 [of 2007],” he said. “It has to be allocated, but who they allocate it to—and how it gets allocated—is still to be determined.”
Indeed, public-safety officials have suggested that the interoperability funds be allocated using existing Department of Homeland Security criteria and procedures. One condition attached to the funding measure is that the money be used to deploy systems that interoperate with the 700 MHz band that will be available nationwide after TV broadcasters vacate the airwaves in February 2009, Ors said.

“It has to be interoperable with 700 MHz,” Ors said. “It can be patched in, but it has to be interoperable with a 700 MHz system.”

While the Call Home Act—legislation designed primarily to ensure that U.S. troops deployed overseas can call home at reduced phone rates—was passed before Congress adjourned, many other legislative efforts pursued during the last year were not, including comprehensive telecom-reform legislation. A new Congress featuring a Democratic majority will convene in January.