said by N3OGH :

Those systems haven't always worked just "dandy" up until now. In several jurisdictions, there are lots of problems with radio and communication.

When I worked as a dispatcher in Chester County, PA (My first job out of college) the County was trying to bring the 800 Mhz radio system on line. The old 500 Mhz system was still running at the time. The first responders were always complaining about the 800 Mhz, as the coverage was terrible. Later, when I worked as a police officer there, I "got it" so to speak. The 800 mhz radios were terrible, and you had to carry the old radios as back up.

Last year, 2 firefighters in Delaware died when they didn't get the order to evacuate a structure fire due to their 800 Mhz radios not functioning.

The NYPD and FDNY STILL can't talk to each other, due to having separate radio systems.

I think what they're looking for here is a separate system from regular dispatch services. A national system that all first responders have access to. So when a catastrophe where first responders are brought in from outside jurisdictions, they can all communicate with each other easily and quickly.

I remember a piece that ran here on BBR about a year ago that talked about the DoD buying the iDEN system from Sprint when they shut it down in 2010. Not a bad start, but being a former Nextel customer, and having to use Nextel at work, I have to say the coverage is just terrible.

Things have gotten a lot better over the years, though. The mobile data terminals we have now are nothing short of essential equipment at this point. The ability to check a driver's license or to see if someone is wanted while in the field is a great capability. We just went to a new software package that lets us see the call taker's notes, a map of the location of the incident, and any previous calls at that location. It's great.

I really do think the evolution of information technology has been the greatest thing to happen to law enforcement since the discovery of fingerprints...

said by moonpuppy :

I will add on to this.

Not every system works in every area the same way.

While 800Mhz is nice, it is not a long distance thing unless you have relatively flat terrain.

Another issue with "trunking" radios is that they are heavily dependant on computers. Each one acts almost like a cell phone when it is on the network. A dispatcher can even change someones radio over to another channel so that everyone working the same incident can be away from everyone else. Computer goes down, problems come up.

A national system, in my opinion, is not that feasible. Trying to find one set of frequencies that work well everywhere is going to be hard. Cell phones still have spotty coverage and in areas where there isn't much, some public agencies still use VHF-lo band stuff.