Click to visit the website and download the P25 guides

We are happy to announce the launch of our P25 Best Practice website complete with the first four P25 Best Practice guides:

  1. First steps to your P25 system
  2. Specifying your P25 system
  3. Procuring your P25 system
  4. Implementing your P25 system Continue Reading
P25 allows dispatch to have more control over defining talkgroups, prioritizing messages and integrating data.

P25 enjoys an almost unique capability in its ability to operate as a conventional, trunked, or simulcast system. As public safety agencies have already discovered, it is fairly straightforward from an engineering point of view to convert a P25 conventional network to trunking, while retaining the investment in the original network. Simulcast operation can be added to all or part of an existing trunked or conventional P25 system. Each mode of operation has its own strengths and tradeoffs which can be summarized as follows. Continue Reading

Public safety agencies across North America choose Tait’s P25 Simulcast solutions – here’s why:

  • 40% increase in cross-county coverage + digital encryption to foil drug gangs’ scanners
  • Narrowband compliant and digital ready + 50% cross-county coverage increase
  • Multi-agency secure solution with 90%+ coverage and 100% redudnancy
  • Dead spots deleted and communities safer in a shared solution for the City and State Continue Reading

Simulcast (simultaneous broadcasting) means multiple base stations transmitting the same voice (or data) signal on the same frequency at the same time. This means that every frequency pair – probably your existing channels – can each provide greatly extended coverage across a very wide area. The secret to Simulcast is high-stability transmitters and signal timing, structured and implemented by coverage experts to negate potential interference.

To understand how Simulcast works, let’s look at some simple simulcast networks: Continue Reading

Q. How does DMR coverage compare with analog?
The coverage of a DMR network is comparable to the coverage of a narrowband analog network. In many instances, the actual coverage of the DMR network is perceived to be better as the voice quality stays the same throughout the whole service area.
Q. Can you combine voice and data on one channel?
DMR supports both voice and data services and on a trunked network, channels can be dynamically allocated to the service that is required. With DMR, priority levels will ensure that traffic with the highest... Continue Reading

Tait MPT 1327 system meets utility’s needs.

Photos courtesy: Rappahannock Electric Cooperative

Faced with frequency squeeze, a federal agency deadline and communications kit from the 80s, Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC) formed a co-operative with four other Virginia state rural utilities to find an end-to-end solution for their narrow banding issues.

The answer: a Tait 220 MHz MPT 1327 radio system with IP backhaul.

REC now serves about 157,000 members with more than 16,000 miles of line in more than 22 counties and, in the aftermath of winter snow storm ‘Saturn’, managed over 40,000 radio calls during six days.

Read more to find out how. Continue Reading

By Marvin DuBois, Director of Product Marketing, Avtec, Inc.

Solving the challenges of digital radio.

Much has changed in the last three years for those choosing the right ingredients for their Command Centers. The environment now includes new mobile radio technology choices, growing regulatory requirements, the need to consolidate dispatching locations and wide-area disaster recovery solutions. All of this contributes to a growing need for system design flexibility supporting multiple radio types, input/output, telephony and specialized computer-aided... Continue Reading

By Trish Messiter, CEO, Clarinox Technologies & Anthony Lister, Senior Systems Designer, Tait Communications.

Long-term value from short-range connectivity; wire-free and hands-free possibilities for critical communications.

In this age of smartphones, touch-screen tablets and imminently wearable computing, the ubiquitous radio communications device seems to be just as resilient to change as it is to the rigours of the environments in which it’s used.

Emergency response personnel are literally weighed down by technology these days as they double-up and triple-up on gadgets to get the... Continue Reading

By Sander Colenbrander, Senior R&D Technician, Tait Communications.

Six things you should know about radio accessories for your new network.

When you are upgrading your network to P25 Phase 2 or to DMR, the TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) signals can cause significant interference on your audio accessories. Probably your existing accessories were designed for FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access) radios, which did not encounter this issue, so will not operate properly on a new network. Network operators need to understand the issues and budget for accessory upgrades. Continue Reading

By Paul Daigneault, Chief Executive Officer, MiMOMax.

A common misconception among radio professionals is that a large bandwidth is needed when linking analog and digital PMR base-station sites. However, this isn’t necessarily the case.

With the development and adoption of more spectrally-efficient radio technologies, it can be argued that there’s no overall shortage of radio spectrum. However, the unique propagation properties particularly associated with radio waves in UHF bands make this the most sought-after and crowded band in the usable spectrum. As a... Continue Reading