Cochise County, AZ, USA

Cochise had two primary goals to achieve when upgrading its existing analog simulcast system to a digital network: to provide wide area saturated coverage and to prevent conversations being intercepted.

The County features a number of hills and adjacent basins meaning received signal quality can be poor and coverage limited. Coverage and clarity of radios are extremely important for the emergency services as many calls can be highly critical. In particular, BAG is a multi-agency task force responsible for seeking out and monitoring narcotics smuggling corridors. These passages often are in remote or less uninhabited areas.

The group has become vulnerable to people using scanners to intercept their radio conversations or have previously had to use radios with analog encryption, meaning poorer coverage over longer distances in comparison to digital radios. Finally, a number of organizations use various competitor portables and mobiles on the analog network. Cochise wanted to ensure these products would work on any future solution, avoiding the financial burden of upgrading the entire fleet of subscriber units immediately.

Within hours of the solution being installed, the BAG was using Tait radios on the network to execute a search warrant. The encrypted digital radios mean the Group can use the radios for operations without being concerned they may be intercepted.

BAG can switch between simplex and repeater channels, but also can use the analog channel for ease of inter-agency collaboration. Since installation, several other organizations are using Tait subscriber units on the system.

Overall, the Tait P25 simulcast network has improved coverage by 40 per cent in the southern area of Cochise County.