New 9-1-1 Center Cutover – Radio System Outage

On Wednesday October 5, 2011 at approximately 04:00 HRS, radio services will move from the current 9-1-1 center to the new center in the Public Safety Building. As part of move of the radio systems, an outage will occur on the 800 MHz OpenSky radio system. This is necessary to turn down the current voice switch and activate the new voice switch located in the new building. The outage is necessary since the old and new network systems cannot run concurrently and therefore the old switch must be disabled before the new switch is enabled. Duration of the network outage is estimated to be 15 minutes.

Conventional radio circuits used for paging and alerting will not be affected and will continue to function for Fire and EMS dispatch.

Announcements will be made before the outage and again once the new system is on line. If any active incidents are in progress, the outage will be delayed until the incident is stabilized or the 9-1-1 center move postponed to a later date.


Considerations for Police:
It is recommended that on duty police departments have an officer on station to receive by telephone any police incidents occurring during outage. If staffing the station, please notify the communications center prior to the planned outage. 800 MHz single site trunking from four high profile sites is available for emergency communications needs during the outage, but it is effective only for mobile operations. Portable radio communications on these sites should not be relied on. VTAC radios will continue to support portable operations. Conventional 800 MHz is also a consideration for local onsite incident communications.

Considerations for Fire Services:
As stated previously, conventional low band radio will be available for paging and dispatch. 800 MHz single site trunking from four high profile sites is available for emergency communications needs during the outage, but it is effective only for mobile operations. Portable radio communications on these sites should not be relied on. VTAC radios will continue to support portable operations. Conventional 800 MHz is also a consideration for local onsite incident communications.

For those companies that still have low band radios installed, they can be used for communications during the outage for incident response and on scene communications. Prior to the cutover, it is suggested that those agencies with low band radios verify the proper tone guard is in place on the transmit side of the radio. The receive side of the radio is to be non-tone guard or “carrier squelch”. The tone guard for Fire 1 (46.06 MHz) is 97.4; Mutual Aid 2 (46.00 MHz) is 88.5; and Mutual Aid 3 is 85.4.

Considerations for EMS:
As stated previously UHF radio will be available for paging and dispatch. BLS transport and ALS mobile units should still be equipped with UHF Med radios. Med 10 will be available for communications during the 800 MHz network outage and should be utilized for response. Communications with hospitals during the 800 MHz outage is not available and cellular phone should be used for any hospital notification needs.

New Encoder Tone- Communications Center Status

At the August 2011 Fire Chiefs meeting, a request was made for an encoder tone for County wide dissemination of pertinent information. Since none existed previous, a new encoder tone is now assigned. The encoder tone for Fire 1 (46.06 MHz) and Med 10 (462.975 MHz) is 910 – 871. It will be activated as part of weather announcements (advisory, watches, and warnings); Communications Center status change; and other pertinent county wide emergency information.

The encoder tone will be effective starting Monday October 10, 2011.