NYS to scrap Open Sky

[IzzyEng4 427]

http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/419611.html

ALBANY — State officials are preparing to pull the plug on a $2 billion statewide emergency radio network that has been beset with a host of problems during its critical first testing period in Erie County.

[Guest Photounit]

Unfortunately the State really needs a State-Wide communications system but the M/A comm Open-Sky system has been nothing but trouble for PA (and other places) long before NYS awarded the contract and they STILL awarded it to them because they were cheaper and look where we are..... But why are they really pulling the plug? It is strictly because of the systems failure to preform? Or is it the fact that the state is in such poor financial shape that this is just an opportunity to save money and in the end we will be left with no radio system......... Anybody that I know that is communications savvy was hoping that Motorola would get the original bid, but according to the article they were double the price of the M/A com bid which to me is hard to justify if true..... But there's a difference between M/A com and Moto, Moto has numerous working systems such as the Conn and MA State Police systems and a very large state-wide system in Michigan. Now we'll have to see if the system gets dropped completely or they actually go ahead and bid another system which you can guarantee the taxpayers will get hosed on......But there will be one difference, It will probably work....... Just my opinion.....

[Union241 3]

Thank God NY is going the smart route and is taking another look at the radios. The county where I work in South Central PA switched to the Open Sky 800mHz and they have been nothing but a let down to say the least. The go live date for Fire and EMS was delayed approximately 2 years while M/A Com and the state worked out issues. That didn't stop the powers that be from letting the Police Departments from being dispatched on them. Within 1 week of the Police go live date, at least one police department advised the 9-1-1 center that they would not be using the system and took the new radios out of the vehicles. Even to this day there are still multiple issues with the radios. I'm trying to find a link for the story, but 2 weeks ago a police officer was shot at and the 9-1-1 center did not recieve the officer's call for help. Firefighter mayday's have not been heard on the first attempt at least once. The county is calling these issues "growing pains". First Responders bought this for about the first year, but we are now 2 years into the system for Fire/EMS and 3 years into it for police. Nobody believes what the county says about them anymore. The radios and the system, IMO, is nothing but junk, but the head of the program for the county isn't willing to admit that they made a mistake and go back to the old system which worked. The Open Sky network is great for data transfer, for which it was originally created. It is by no means an ideal network for 9-1-1 communications. What does it say about the system when the PA State Police reject the system all together and stick with their old Motorola network? NYS is much better off and a much safer place for first responders to work in without the Open Sky network.

[trauma74 111]

I have been saying since the day that M/ACOM was awarded the bid to build the Statewide Radio Network for NY that it was a mistake and that the system will never work properly. I attended a meeting about 2 years ago that was given by the NYS Office of Technology. The guys from NYS and the rep from M/ACOM gave everyone in the room a good line of crap saying this system was going to work all over the state. When the group I was sitting with started asking questions about the system, the guys from NYS and the M/ACOM rep tried answering our questions and sounded like a bunch of morons. I have been keeping up on all of the failures since the beginning. The state has stated numerous times that there has been no state money used on this system, but what about all of the hours that the NYS Office of Technology guys spent working on this system? They were paid their salary all this time working with M/ACOM, so taxpayer money has been wasted!!!!

The lowest bidder should not always be awarded the contract. Everyone in Public Safety has seen the results of contracts being awarded to the lowest bidder and how the taxpayers ended up being screwed.

Many proponents of the M/ACOM system bashed Motorola for coming in with a bid that was double that of the M/ACOM bid. There were a few reasons why the Motorola bid was double. One was that Motorola was actually building a system that would provide real statewide coverage. Their system would have had more tower sites and would have provided "in building" portable radio coverage. Second was that Motorola was going to use equipment and technology that is not inexpensive by nature. Digital encrypted radios, repeaters and other equipement is expensive and if they were going to have more tower sites than M/ACOM, of course the price would be higher. What NYS also failed to tell everyone was that Motorola was going to provide backup power sources to their sites via fuel and solar powered generators. It is a "you get what you pay for" situation. You pay half the amount of the Motorola system and you get half the system.

Much of the technology that M/ACOM was going to use is new and unproven technology. Who is their right mind would want to use unproven technology in a statewide system? M/ACOM's system was not even going to utilize the same frequency bands across the state. How is a system that does not use the same frequency bands throughout the whole system a true system? The state was broken up into 3 parts. One part was going to be on the 800MHZ frequency band, the second part was going to utilize the 700MHZ frequency band and the third part was going to be on the VHF 150MHZ frequency band. The M/ACOM system was not even going to be FCC Project 25 compliant. It was going to be a propietary system. If a Public Safety agency was on the boarder of the areas of state where the 3 different frequency bands are used, this would mean that they would have to have 3 different radios in their vehicles. Due to the system not being P25 compliant, an interoperable radio such as the Thales Liberty would not work for the agencies that need to cover multiple frequency bands.

The State also did not take a few things into consideration. They did not take into consideration that fact that the 700 & 800 MHZ frequency bands do not work well in areas with a lot of hills and mountains. The last time I checked, the State of New York was not flat! Yes, there are a few areas of the state that do not have hills and mountains, but the these areas are few and far between. Why not shoot for a system that works well with hills and mountains, such as a VHF system or maybe a UHF system. The State also did not take into consideration that voice paging cannot be performed on any frequency bands above the 400MHZ band and that OSHA & NFPA standards do not permit the use of radios working off of repeaters on the fireground. There was no plan on the M/ACOM system for voice paging (only digital paging, which nobody uses as their primary paging system) and there was no plan for non-repeated frequencies talk around frequencies for fireground use. It has also been highly recommended along with the use of non-repeated fireground frequencies for fireground operations, that these communications be performed over non-digital analog radios. Digital radios have too many downfalls for fireground and have been found to be dangerous and have caused much needed calls for help to not reach incident commanders and dispatch centers.

The majority of public safety agencies within NYS use Motorola, Kenwood and Icom radio systems. Why bring in a company that will not have any compatability with these 3 brands of radio systems? Also, the majority of these agencies use analog VHF & UHF radio systems. Why switch to a system that does not fall into these categories? Since the beginning of this statewide radio project, the City of NY has had no intention of switching over to it. When 9/11 happened, there were agencies from the entire State that responded to NYC to help. The M/ACOM system would not be compatable with the various radio systems that are in use in NYC, so any agency that would have switched to the Statewide system would still not have had the ability to communicate with the agencies in NYC.

The Federal Government uses proven Motorola VHF & UHF nationwide radio systems. The State of NY needs to dump this M/ACOM system and go back to the drawing board.

[RocklandFires 44]

Anyone know how much taxpayer $ was wasted on this project ?

[Bnechis 3,961]

OSHA & NFPA standards do not permit the use of radios working off of repeaters on the fireground.

Can you give the OSHA & NFPA standards that state this. I've never read this and we hae been looking at a fireground repeater system (and other systems) to deal with dead spots within highrise buildings

[trauma74 111]

I will have to do some searching, but I will find the codes & regulations that deal with the use of repeaters during fireground operations. There are a few things that I want to clarify here also. The type of repeater system that they do not want used on the fireground are the repeaters that are used to communicate across long distances. These repeaters use one frequency for the input and one for the output. If you are doing an interior fire attack over this type of repeater system, there is a chance that your portable radio may not be able to hit (reach) the repeater. If you do not hit the repeater, your transmission (your MAYDAY) will not be sent thru the repeater and back to your incident commanders and brother/sister firefighters who are on the fireground waiting to hear your call for help or assistance.

If you were on a non-repeated talkaround channel, your radio would transmit and receive on the same channel and when you transmit. Your transmissions from your portable radios would be sent directly to the other firefighters who are on the fireground with you.

Now, there are other types of systems and/or units that may be called "repeaters". These maybe be mobile vehicle repeaters, in-building repeaters or bi-directional amplifiers. Mobile vehicle repeaters are units that take your radio transmissions and repeat them over a different frequency band. This type of repeater should not prevent your transmissions from inside a building from being heard on the outside.

In-building repeaters or Bi-directions amplifiers are systems that amplify radio signals from the outside of a structure to the inside of a structure and vice versa. Several companies make these amplifiers, my EMS station has one for Nextel service. Our station did not have great Nextel service, so the addition of this bi-directional amplifier brought a strong signal into our building so we could use our Nextel phones without any problems. The use of bi-directional amplifiers in highrise buildings could great improve radio communications between interior attack crews and their commanders on the outside or down in the lobby of the building. These types of systems could have helped emergency personnel communicate better at the WTC towers on 9/11. I know that there were other communications issues on 9/11 which I will not touch on at this time, but bi-directional amplifiers could have helped and can help in any type of high rise or large building.

I hope that this helps give a better understanding of the different definitions of "repeaters" and what they are used for.

[SteveOFD 176]

Can you give the OSHA & NFPA standards that state this. I've never read this and we hae been looking at a fireground repeater system (and other systems) to deal with dead spots within highrise buildings

Capt,

I did a little research and found this:

NFPA Standard 1221 - Standard for the Installation, Maintanence and Use of Public Emergency Service Communications. Section 8.3.1.3 states "A separate simplex radio channel shall be provided for onscene tactical communications." This can be found at a ROP (Report on Proposal) at NFPA.org. Section 8.3.1 is the Genereal section and seems to address some of this. A lot to look over, but this seems to be where your answer should be.

The way I read it, no repeaters, but then NFPA Standards are only "recommendations" not law unless adopted as such.

[trauma74 111]

Steve,

Thank you for finding the section of the NFPA regarding the radios. I know that the NFPA standard is only a recommendation, however, if/when something should happen to a firefighter, God Forbid!!!!!.....in court the lawyers will look at the recommendations from the NFPA and ask why they were not followed. This actually goes for all of the NFPA standards and recommendations.

[NWFDMedic 58]

Doug,

I remember sitting in that meeting or a similar meeting and realizing that there was more information about radio communications in my EMT book 15 years ago than the guys from MACOM and NYS could provide. The system was failed from the beginning and we know all about failed radio communications in Orange County. My chiefs have to have 3 radios in their vehicles to talk to the mutual aid departments to which we are first due, not to mention the fact that in most cases we have no direct communication to EMS. Then there's the whole county v. local base mess (sorry Doug, but it's a pet peeve of mine...some of the Base 5 dispatchers are great).

Oh well, another blunder by the state. Back to the drawing board.