MACC 9-1-1, Grant County, WA, USA

MACC 9-1-1 began the search for a critical communications solution partner to address:

• poor radio coverage,
• interference,
• inadequate critical infrastructure,
• too few channels and radio feature sets,
• Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 12.5 kHz narrowband compliance,
• agency interoperability and multi-jurisdiction pursuits.

Mr Hane says, "We wanted a solutions partner that would provide several values such as expertise, professionalism and the ability to deliver. With a huge investment like this we wanted to make sure the vendor we chose was going to be a long-term partner. With these decision points in mind, we chose Tait."

MACC 9-1-1 wanted a standards-based, digital system that was commonly accepted in the public safety industry. "We certainly didn't want a proprietary system, so we chose the P25 open standard technology. Based on the issues with our existing system, we decided a P25 trunked simulcast network with Linear Simulcast Modulation (800 MHz) would be the best platform."

The strong partnership between MACC 9-1-1 and Tait Communications has greatly benefited public safety for first responders and the citizens in Grant County. Mr Hane says, "Tait is the best partner I've ever worked with on a project of this nature; I've been in the industry for over 20 years and have dealt with many multi-million dollar, contractual projects like this one. It's certainly not a vendor-customer relationship, we have a true partnership."

Improving officer safety was a key driver for the project. Mr Hane says, "The transition from analog to digital has significantly improved our officer safety with better communications coverage and better audio quality across from the new digital system."

Public safety systems designed by Tait experts are, by nature, resilient and robust. Scott Quintavalle, Chief Technical Officer, Tait Communications, comments, "In an emergency or disaster, cellular technology is typically overloaded and emergency radio communications must perform. We designed the MACC 9-1-1 network to withstand multiple failures."

Mr Hane continues, "The conservative design process with Tait has paid off. We can handle multi-point network failures now and continue to provide communications for our first responders in times of crisis. Since the system has been online, we've had multiple incidents such as lightning storms, rain storms, hail storms and wind storms where we've taken multiple failures and our system continues to perform!"

Inter-agency events can be easily coordinated with the new communications system according to Mr Hane. "Multi-jurisdicational coordination is much smoother. We have more advanced feature sets on our emergency communications system than we've ever had before. For example, we implemented Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for law enforcement so they can conduct covert operations in a secure environment. We work with the Department of Justice and U.S Marshals often. With the new system, there have been instances where there have been so many bad guys apprehended and arrested that the jails in Grant County are full. Without encryption or without working collaboratively on our system there's no way that would have ever happened in the past."

Mr Hane concludes, "When I look back, Tait provided a very robust design. We now have an emergency radio communications system that has been designed around our functionality and critical communications requirements. I am very happy with Tait and what the partnership has achieved for public safety in Grant County."