Police Ahead Of Schedule On Narrowband Switch

It’s a slow and ongoing change that has kept law enforcement and fire departments across the country, well, narrow-minded.

As mandated by the Federal Communications Commission, all police and fire departments using 150-174 MHz and 421-512 MHz (VHF/UHF) wideband frequencies must switch to narrowband (12.5 kHz or narrower) by Jan. 1, 2013, or risk fines and possible loss of their licenses.

The FCC ordered the change because the UHF and VHF frequency bands have become congested, leaving a limited spectrum open to system expansion and new implementation. The agency hopes the switch, which first was discussed two decades ago, will ensure more efficient use of the spectrum.

While the made the switch on its own three years ago, the  is entering the final phase of its conversion after starting in 2006. All that’s left is to complete some software upgrades.

“When we started, basically what we had to do was buy new radios that were P25 (digital) compliant and narrowband compliant,” said Huntley Deputy Police Chief Michael Klunk. “Obviously to get a whole project going you to have to start with hardware first — make sure it’s forward compatible and backward compatible and all those kinds of things. So we bought the mobile radios first and, over two subsequent years, we bought portable radios.”

Klunk said that purchasing mobile radios, which are mounted in squad cars, and portable radios, worn by officers, was an upgrade the department had been considering. Also on the upgrade list were hardware systems and pieces of equipment, some of which were more than 10 years old.

“Obviously it would be cheaper to just reprogram everything, but since we were going to do the work anyway it made sense to make some upgrades,” Klunk said. “So this isn’t exactly a turnover of the entire system. It’s just a few components here and there.”

Klunk said approximately $56,000 has been allocated for the final phase of the project, bringing the cost for the entire six-year change to nearly $149,000.

It’s money well-spent, he said.

The change “should improve communications,” he said. “With the P25 component, it will make us capable of handling things that come down in the future like digital capabilities, enhanced capabilities, and encoding frequencies. But the P25s are essentially digital, and with the way computers and communications are these days, (the P25s) allow us different abilities than the analog system did.”

Klunk also stressed that the police department is not losing any of its channels by switching to narrowband.

“We have three channels today, we’ve three channels tomorrow,” he said. “But they want us to use a narrow spectrum of that particular frequency and that’s what the FCC mandate is about.”

Among the other benefits to the narrowband conversion is the incorporation of a repeater system, a communications advantage the  uses.

“When we transmit from a fire engine, it actually goes to a tower which receives it and transmits it back out,” Deputy Fire Chief Ken Caudle.

“So (the repeater system) is sort of a two-way process that makes things a little bit better for us communication-wise," Caudle. "On the old system, it was a single frequency in, the same frequency out, and everybody in the county was on that frequency. When a storm ravaged McHenry County, it was a thousand or so fire departments on the same frequency trying to do the same job. It was just a logistical nightmare for everybody.”

A second benefit will be direct communication between Huntley law enforcement and the village’s public works supervisors. The latter use the UHF band, but once the police department’s spare narrowband radios have been reprogrammed, they’ll use those.

“Basically what happens right now is public works is on a 400 MHz channel and we’re in the 155 MHz channel so we can’t talk to each other,” Klunk said. “What the change will allow us to do is have additional radio equipment that we can give to public works and be able to talk villagewide. Currently, because we are on the same VHF band, we are able to talk to the fire department, the Kane County Sheriff’s Office and agencies like that.”

But, Klunk said, keeping lines of communication open with other agencies has been somewhat of a challenge.

“It’s kind of an organization nightmare because you have to figure out what’s currently working and where you’re going in the future, and not everybody is doing (the transition) at the same time,” he said.

Huntley police bridge the gap by using radios that accommodate both wide-band and narrowband frequencies.

As for when the transition will be complete, Klunk said he hopes to have Huntley on board by the end of the year, but an official conclusion depends on outside factors.

“We’re not completely done until the state is done and I think the state (rollout) calendar goes out until September or October of 2012,” he said.