By Gerry Smith
Chicago Tribune
AURORA, Ill. — Aurora’s aging emergency radio system has shut down seven times in the last three years.
Officers were unable to communicate with dispatchers for several hours in some cases while the city arranged to borrow replacement parts from other suburbs because the manufacturer no longer makes them. Though the outages have not had serious consequences, the city did not want to take any more chances.
So ater this year, Aurora and Naperville will spend more than $20 million converting their analog radio systems to ones that use digital technology. The new radios will be more reliable and authorities say they will also provide better service from inside buildings and allow all emergency responders to communicate with each other instead of through a dispatcher.
But critics said the new system could hamper radio communication with other agencies and make it difficult for people outside the system to monitor radio traffic. Plus, there have been problems with the system elsewhere in the country.Naperville and Aurora decided to buy the new M/A-COM system together because the neighboring departments often back each other up in emergencies. Naperville is paying $10.1 million for its share, most of which is coming from capital expenditures and bonds. Aurora will pay between $10 and $15 million for its share, depending on bids out for its radio towers, said Lt. Rusty Sullivan.
Although few surrounding agencies use M/A-COM radios, Sullivan said both Aurora and Naperville would be able to directly communicate with other radio systems with some setup. But some neighboring departments would need to buy equipment to communicate with Aurora’s and Naperville’s new radios, said Dan Voiland, Naperville’s telecommunications manager.
Voiland said Naperville’s current radio system is more than two decades old and provides “terrible” in-building service. “It was designed for a smaller Naperville,” he said.
By converting voices to numeric code, digital radio systems also offer extra security for emergency communications. In 2004, the Chicago Fire Department converted to a digital radio system, in large part to avoid hackers. Voiland said it was important to have a secure radio system to prevent burglars from listening on scanners and planning their escapes.
The systems also make it significantly harder for legal monitoring by scanner enthusiasts and news organizations. Voiland said the department is working with news media to find new ways of alerting them to breaking news. Still, scanner enthusiasts argue that digital radios prevent them from assisting law enforcement.
“There are numerous examples of people listening to scanners helping catch criminals,” said Dan Veeneman, a columnist for Monitoring Times, a monthly magazine for radio enthusiasts.
In other parts of the country, the digital radios - manufactured by Harris Corp. - have caused problems.
Earlier this year in New York, officials terminated a $2 billion contract with M/A-COM to build a statewide public safety radio network, citing the system’s failure in numerous operational tests. The company has filed a lawsuit against the state for backing out of the contract, claiming New York officials were seeking financial relief during budgetary deficits.
In Milwaukee, the police department’s neighborhood task force still was reporting problems with the company’s radios six years after purchasing the system, according to local news reports. Milwaukee police spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz said in an e-mail that the system “is still a work in progress for our department.”
At a 2006 firefighters association meeting in Lebanon County, Pa., one firefighter said he found M/A-COM radios did not always function inside buildings. That raised the possibility that a firefighter could be stranded with no way to call for help, The Lebanon Daily News reported.
“I am not bringing body bags out on a watch of mine over any radio system,” said Chief Paul Longenecker of the Annville Union Hose Fire Co., according to the paper.
Victoria Dillon, a spokeswoman for Harris Corp., said the issues in Milwaukee and Lebanon County were “complex” and had little bearing on the system’s overall reliability. She said it was unlikely that Aurora and Naperville would have similar problems because they have “taken great care in making sure that they’re getting what it is that they need.”
Aurora and Naperville officials say they are confident they will not experience similar problems. This month, Voiland traveled to the manufacturer’s headquarters in Lynchburg, Va., where he said the system passed more than 100 preplanned tests. Both departments have the right to terminate the contract after a 30-day trial period, he said.
“We have looked at where people have had issues, and we’re going to prevent those from happening here,” Voiland said. “We have the intention of delivering a very reliable system that meets the needs of our front line responders.”
Copyright 2009 Chicago Tribune