By Jennifer Rios
The San Angelo Standard-Times (Texas)

SAN ANGELO, Texas — The city's new $5 million radio system is giving police and firefighters better coverage and more secure communication, and interoperability — that chance for members of multiple agencies to talk to one another in a shared system.

The M/A-COM system replaces the city's 10-year-old EF Johnson radios, which were no longer "functioning up to standards," said Wayne Gilley, city director of information technology.

Communication was becoming a problem as people in one agency tried talking with people in other agencies, he said.

Calls between radios would sometimes get lost, which was especially dangerous for firefighters trying to talk to each other at a fire scene.

Two towers were built for the new system: a 400-foot structure on St. Anne's Street and a smaller tower on Southland Boulevard. Previously, the city shared a tower with multiple users, such as Verizon.

"With the two towers, we probably have a 95 percent coverage area in Tom Green County," Gilley said.

David Hermes, project manager for the system, said the old coverage area was less than 50 percent for the county, and was 90 percent inside the city limits. The new system's mobile units are expected to provide full coverage of the city as well as the 95 percent of the county. The department had 1,100 users, including portable and mobile radios in police cars, ambulances, firetrucks and city vehicles.

In the past, the Texas Department of Public Safety could lose communication if troopers went to Bronte, said Public Safety Communications Sgt. Victor Vasquez. In the new system, radio users have communicated with people as far as Corpus Christi, who use M/A-COM portable radios bought in 1986.

Once everything is purchased, Vasquez said, updates can be made rather than tossing out the whole system, which is what happened with the EF Johnson system.

A big push on interoperability is going on nationally, Gilley said. In cases of major incidents, such as a tornado, all the city agencies operating on the radio system can open "talk groups" quickly and communicate more effectively with each other. Surrounding counties operating on compatible systems can also be called on. Lake patrol, airport security, municipal court, police department and a portion of the fire department use the digital capabilities.

With the old system, a person could buy a radio scanner and listen in on channels from the 150-megahertz band Vasquez said. There are no commercial scanners that can cover the 800 megahertz of the new system, Gilley said, making the system more secure.

Officers in the department like the tighter security, Vasquez said, but the system "does take some getting used to." The new portable radios are worn on the hip and do not have to be raised to be spoken into, he said.

The radios convert the speech into a digital signal, which is converted back to voice at the receiving end.

"It's basically a computer talking to a computer," Vasquez said.