I work for a small LE organization, and we are experiencing some possibly dangerous communication issues. We do not operate like normal Officers or Deputies, were a plain clothes investigations task force. Since we don't operate out of normal squads we have never used traditional "trunked" radios, instead using Nextel push to talk cell phones. Nextel worked ok for the most part, but we would still occasionally lose communications at important times.
A few weeks back we decided to try Verizon push to talk phones, they have been a disaster for the most part, seeming to fail at only the most important times.
I have been tasked with providing a remedy to this issue, weather it be a different technology we haven't tried, or just going the more traditional radio route. I need to be able to talk on a group (maybe 10 people) at the push of a button. We operate in a large somewhat rural county so i may need to talk to someone 50 miles away.
Currently we all have 800 MHz portable radios that are basically only good for line of sight on our frequency. If i change over to the sheriffs dept frequency its good for 30-40 miles depending on terrain or buildings.
I guess what I'm trying to ask is, should i look for another more reliable form of push to talk that runs on cell towers, or pay the very large price to have our own repeaters put up on towers around the county so out handhelds can get out?
A few weeks back we decided to try Verizon push to talk phones, they have been a disaster for the most part, seeming to fail at only the most important times.
I have been tasked with providing a remedy to this issue, weather it be a different technology we haven't tried, or just going the more traditional radio route. I need to be able to talk on a group (maybe 10 people) at the push of a button. We operate in a large somewhat rural county so i may need to talk to someone 50 miles away.
Currently we all have 800 MHz portable radios that are basically only good for line of sight on our frequency. If i change over to the sheriffs dept frequency its good for 30-40 miles depending on terrain or buildings.
I guess what I'm trying to ask is, should i look for another more reliable form of push to talk that runs on cell towers, or pay the very large price to have our own repeaters put up on towers around the county so out handhelds can get out?