Police and Fire Chiefs discuss switch to narrow banding that occurs ...

Once per month the Chiefs from Dubois County fire and police departments meet to talk about issues that affect their department?s functions. The focus of the discussion in Monday night?s meeting was on a concept called ?narrow banding.?

This term describes a change that is mandated by the Federal Communications Commission in Washington that affects wireless communications across the nation. It means the frequencies in which radio communications for emergency services operates is getting squeezed into a smaller space to make room for more available frequencies that the FCC can allocate to other things.

When a person calls 911 and requests emergency services, the 911 Communications Center uses radio transmitters to alert the proper department of the call. The communications that takes place behind the scene is very critical for emergency responders to get the message and respond appropriately.

The ?narrow banding? is mandated to be finished this year, but Dubois County is implementing the change late this month, taking a ?sooner rather than later? approach.

In last night?s meeting, the discussion centered on who is going to go first in the modification of radios to work with narrow banding. In attendance at the meeting was Charlie McIntire with Advanced Radio Communications of Huntingburg. He is one of the facilitators for changing radios over to narrow banding.

?Radios have to be updated and reprogrammed, actually radios will probably have to be updated just to be capable of being reprogrammed,? said McIntire. ?It does not just affect the fire and police, it affects any two way radio user in that VHF and UHF bandwidth. Factories and all these two way radio users are affected by this.?

The change to narrow band for Dubois County Fire and Police will begin on Monday, February 27th and should be completed by the end of the month. Janice Love with the 911 communications center in Jasper says there should be no interruption to services or communications during this time.

Source: http://www.dcfreep.com/?p=14112

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