Q. What are the benefits of moving to a P25 digital radio solution?
Digital radio provides key benefits such as:

  • Improved audio quality and clarity – especially at low received signal levels near the edge of coverage
  • Enhanced user features
  • More capacity – from the same number of frequencies (spectral efficiency)
  • Greater coverage – than analog, with a sharp drop at full range
  • Secure end-to-end encryption – compared to analog scrambling/encryption techniques, digital encryption has no degradation in voice quality.

P25 is a standard specified by public... 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

The premise of APCO 2013’s ‘APPStorm’ event was simple — take the Tait Communications API, and then develop and integrate useful applications for Public Safety, creating something greater than the radio and infrastructure alone.

Four teams took part in the two-day collaboration event, including representatives from Tait partners Zetron, Avtec, Higher Ground, Exacom, and Droidworx.

In just two days, the teams managed to create truly compelling demo applications that showcased the flexibility of the Tait API and their innovations. Continue Reading

Heading along to Anaheim next week? We’ll be at booth #345.

We’re gearing up for what promises to be a fantastic conference and expo, and we have a jam-packed schedule of new innovations to show attendees:
Tait APPStorm
What do you get when you bring together a number of partners, Tait design engineers, a wealth of good ideas and APCO 2013?

You get Tait APPStorm — a two-day collaboration event between Tait Communications, partners and clients to explore solutions for emergency responders.

Together, APPStorm-ers will be... 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

By Scott Quintavalle, Vice-President Systems Engineering , Tait Communications.

When Public Safety radio networks were analog, life was a lot simpler. There was little variation in the way audio was delivered, and measuring signal strength was a reasonable indication of audio quality for radio users, so long as there was not too much environmental noise or interference.

While digital radio undoubtedly delivers a host of benefits, it does cause a few headaches for technical and operations people who need to define and maintain a level of... Continue Reading

By Darek Wieczorek, Principal Consultant, Tait Communications.

Delegates at the third P25 Best Practices Roundtable hosted by Tait Communications

The third and final P25 Best Practices Roundtable took place at Lake Tahoe, California, on July 25th. We narrowed our focus to shed light on those issues that hadn’t yet been explored fully in the previous two sessions. Much of the time was spent discussing system management issues, and — given that the cumulative experience in the room exceeded 250 years and included some very recent efforts — we learned some valuable points: Continue Reading

What it means, how it’s done, and how you decide what you need — a panel of three Tait experts share their knowledge on the subject.

The spectral efficiencies, interoperability and data transmission benefits of P25 are just part of the story; network operators are also working with much higher expectations of network robustness, tougher KPIs and risk of litigation. In public safety, near enough just isn’t good enough. That’s why Public Safety network operators now specify networks with no single point of failure. But what exactly does that mean? Continue Reading