Oneida County, WI, USA

A lack of county-wide radio coverage had driven Oneida's radio system upgrade. With typical portable coverage only 40 percent, the County needed a radio solution that would saturate coverage. In particular, they wanted a solution that could provide staged migration to digital communications capable of working within the 12.5kHz bandwidth.

The public safety agencies within the County had different needs. Law enforcement agencies needed to move to P25 to interoperate with neighboring counties. However, some Oneida fire departments are volunteer organizations which dispatch emergency alerts via analog pagers. So the county could not completely migrate to P25 digital radio as some channels needed to remain analog.

Even with a larger site separation than is generally recommended for C4FM, Tait engineers optimized the system to exceed the required 90 percent coverage, primarily due to the improved RF design.

Oneida's law enforcement agencies have been able to incorporate Tait P25 mobiles and portables into their fleet and utilize the secure digital channel. Meanwhile, fire crews are still able to utilize the analog channels.

The Tait solution provides us with better coverage areas, continues our ability to use a secure channel, allows us to have consistent subscriber programming and prepares us for future upgrades.