Realizing the need for better emergency services communications, New Mexico has implemented a strategy that is slowly spreading digital improvements across the state. As KRQE-TV reports, the radio system is now in year six of its 10 year projected timeline.
The project was necessary, explained Department of Information Technology Public Safety Director, Michael Rohrbacher, because “the coverage was pretty bad. There was a large portion of the state that simply wasn’t covered, and it wasn’t unusual for State Police officers, for example, when they were in these areas, to have to fall back to their cell phones for communication. In some areas without cell phone coverage,” he added, “They simply had no communications. And that’s simply unacceptable for our state’s first responders.”
A new “P25 Digital Trunked Radio System” is being rolled out to replace the old VHF radio communications. Whereas the old system required different tower hardware for each emergency response entity, the new towers can coordinate with multiple users. “Our previous system, which actually was a system of many disparate systems that then talked together, was totally inadequate,” noted Rohrbacher.
The new system, which has cost New Mexico millions of dollars, will allow approximately 50 different agencies across the state to communicate with each other and is expected to field 12 million radio calls per year. The upgrade will also include geolocating capabilities, a feature not previously available to the emergency responders.
“This gives us and radio dispatchers the ability to see where radios are physically, on a map, and what they’re doing, what channel they’re on,” said Rohrbacher in praise of the new system. “This has proved very very useful. For example, at Balloon Fiesta, we had an officer that actually was experiencing a medical emergency and couldn’t explain where he was – we were able to locate him on the map and get help to him.”
Reader Interactions