The Treehouse Blog

Several years ago, the PA state government began deploying a proprietary trunked communications system… and encouraged County governments to use it. Since it’s proprietary, the governments are locked into the price structure of a single vendor (brilliant! bravo!) and radio enthusiasts like me won’t be able to use our scanners to listen in (at least, not anytime soon). I’m a big fan of government transparency and openness… and this is moving in totally the wrong direction. All isn’t immediately lost however. Even if fire and ambulance dispatch is handled with OpenSky staring on June 1st, 2006 as this article says, it sounds as if paging will still be simulcast on traditional FM frequencies so that voice pagers, sirens, and scanners can function without an upgrade. It seems that radio geeks aren’t the only ones concerned… just listen to those fighting fires.

And while I’m ranting… Since this system is IP based, how long will it take before a laptop in a state cop’s car contracts a virus because he installed an unauthorized Wifi card, and cripples communications state-wide? Consultants won’t go hungry cleaning it up, that’s for sure.