The first order of magnitude was to get the Maryland Transportation Authority Police and one of our counties, Kent County, on the system as the first users. That was driven by the FCC deadline. Both agencies had to narrowband, which essentially means you have to replace a lot of your equipment and all of your radios to be more compact in how you use the spectrum that you get from the FCC. It’s an expensive upgrade from the regular systems.
So rather than have individual state agencies operating on different radio systems, and each one having a different life cycle and on different frequencies, Gov. Martin O’Malley put out an executive order that the state move toward one single radio system for all state agencies, as well as encourage local jurisdictions to join the state system.
Right now, a lot of the infrastructure we’re using — the radio towers and some of the buildings — are owned by individual agencies. So the state is working toward legislation that would create a state radio control board, which would create a governance body that would be responsible for the radio system operation and maintenance.
We’ve already engaged in discussions with Delaware and Virginia in two areas along the border of this first rollout. First responders will be able to communicate with surrounding counties for mutual aid events. We’ve also set wheels in motion to share interoperability frequencies with Washington, D.C., West Virginia and Pennsylvania, when adjoining counties come on in the next phase.
Maryland was unable to deploy an 800 MHz radio system several years ago, but it continued to build towers in cooperation with local jurisdictions that are now available for this system. That forward thinking and the cooperation of the locals have made this deployment much smoother than if we were building new towers.