lceditor posted on May 15, 2008 12:28
By Brad Devereaux
As a kid, if you’ve ever talked to your next-door neighbor on a pair of tin cans attached to a string, then you know how it feels to be able to communicate in a way you never thought possible. Pretty soon, you’re designing a three-way tin can phone system, and eventually you upgrade to some walkie-talkies. If left unchecked and with an unlimited budget, your communication curiosity would extend into creating a vast network to talk to anyone around the globe at any time.
A new communication system being constructed in Wyoming called WyoLink isn’t quite a global network, but it’s no tin can phone, either. When the statewide network is fully operational, it will link virtually all agencies in the state and enable any mobile radio on the system to connect with other radios anywhere in the state.
Bob Symons, administrative support for the Public Safety Communications Commission (PSCC), which governs the rules and regulations of WyoLink, said that, once completed, the system will consist of 57 core sites for towers, 45 of which are already constructed. Three sites are under construction and the remaining nine sites are yet to be built, and it will probably be 2009 before they are all completed.
He said the commission is still working on obtaining leases for some of the sites where WyoLink towers will be placed.
“Leasing federal lands takes time,” he said. “That’s what’s going to keep us from getting those last nine sites up.”
PSCC is also waiting for a license from the FCC to be able to transmit and receive from their towers. The FCC has enacted some new requirements since the WyoLink project began, and “we’re working that process as hard as we can,” Symons said, and he expects the license application to be sent to the FCC by the end of this week.
In Big Horn County, one site, called Torchlight, has been constructed in Basin. The PSCC is working to secure a lease of land from the Big Horn National Forest in the Big Horn Mountains for another tower to help extend coverage of WyoLink in Big Horn County. Symons said the construction of that site might not be completed until next year.
There are also several core sites in Park County that will provide coverage in Big Horn County. After WyoLink is up and running, PSCC will add more towers in spots where there are needed.
“We’ll go out with the public safety agencies and do testing of their current system site by site and then with what WyoLink provides,” Symons said. After the tests, additional towers may be added in areas with spotty coverage.
“We’re hoping for 95 percent mobile radio coverage,” Symons said, referring to a 50-watt radio mounted in a car, not to be confused with a portable or handheld radio that runs at five watts. The system will improve portable radio communication as well, but not as drastically.
WyDOT Telecom handles the technical side of Wyolink and works closely with PSCC to manage the system.
Symons said the towers will work similar to the ones that broadcast cell-phone signals across the country.
“If you drive around, you never know what tower you’re on with your cell phone, you just know it has coverage or it doesn’t have coverage. That’s the same way this system will operate,” Symons said.
Every time someone pushes his radio button to talk, the system automatically brings up towers in the different locations where recipients of the message are located.
“You’ll be able to talk from Lovell to Cheyenne,” Big Horn County Emergency Coordinator Rich Fink said. “In an emergency situation like we had in 911, it puts us all using the same radio system so we can communicate. It’s a communication system where all agencies coming in can talk.”
The new statewide system will be used in addition to the regular voice paging system already in place, Fink said, because WyoLink doesn’t do paging; it handles radio-to-radio communication.
As part of a requirement of homeland security grant funds, all of the radios purchased in Big Horn County must be APCO compliant so that they will work with WyoLink. The new APCO compliant radios will still talk to the older radios, but the old radios will not work on WyoLink. Some scanners may not pick up radio traffic on the new system, according to local media reports, and ones that will work with WyoLink will cost about $500.
The new radios also come with an even bigger price tag: a handheld or car-mounted law enforcement radio with encryption runs about $4,500, and a fireman or EMT radio is about $3,000 Fink said. About 200 APCO compliant radios have been purchased by the county since Fink started at his position in 2004, and they will continue to purchase more every year to phase out the old-style radios. This means as soon as WyoLink is operational, local responders will be connected.
“The key to this system is to provide interoperability,” Symons said, “so that law enforcement at all levels of government can communicate. Another level of inoperability is that we have fire services all within one county or in multiple counties being able to talk to each other. The best part is that we can have law enforcement, fire and EMS all talking to each other.”
There are currently five sites in southwest Wyoming that are licensed and on the air; another 13 sites are operating on a special temporary authorization from the FCC for testing purposes. Symons said he was in Kaycee last week he was bouncing a signal off a tower on Casper Mountain, as an example of the reach of the towers.
The program is funded through the state of Wyoming and carries a price tag of more than $60 million, including $12 million approved in this year’s legislative budget session, to be used to provide improved portable radio coverage (additional sites). $2.2 million was provided through federal funds. Original funding was approved in the 2004 state budget.
In the future, WyoLink system will cross borders into other states, Symons said, but the first priority is to cover Wyoming.