County considers digital pagers for fire and emergency services

By Michael Howell

The Ravalli County Commissioners agreed last week to spend an initial $5,000 towards researching the viability and feasibility of switching to a digital paging system for use by all the valley’s fire districts as well as the Ravalli County Search and Rescue and Marcus Daly Ambulance and other emergency services.

The issue was brought before the County Commissioners by the All Valley Fire Council and the other emergency services in the valley due to impending changes in federal regulations that will require them to move from the current broadband radio system to the required narrow band service by January 1, 2013.

Three Mile Fire Chief Russell Giese told the commissioners that 13 valley Fire Districts, and the county’s Search and Rescue team as well as the ambulance and emergency medical responders had all come to agreement that it made more sense to switch to a digital paging system rather than shift over to the narrow band system as required by the end of the year. They noted that shifting to the narrow band analogue system would not only reduce the current reach of the paging system by 20 to 40 percent, but it would also involve investing a large amount of money in new analogue pagers that cost from $400 to $500 each. Not only that but the FCC has already announced that a future halving in the narrow band range was on the horizon as well. With digital pagers costing closer to $100 per pager and the analogue system headed towards eventual obsolescence, they reason that it makes sense at this time to switch to digital.

The exact cost of the switch has not yet been determined, however, based on an initial guess the commissioners were being asked to join in on the cost to the tune of $78,000 in what could be a total cost of over $240,000.

The commissioners balked at making such a commitment up front, but were willing to fund the Department of Emergency Services up to $5,000 to prepare an RFP for the work in order to nail the total cost down. That effort would include doing a propagation study of the system to see if additional transmitter sites would be required and how many so that the cost of going digital or narrow band analogue could be compared.