New Fire/Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Paging System -

On Thursday, 17 November, the Chester County Board of Commissioners signed contracts with Motorola Solutions and ARINC to provide the new Fire/Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Paging System for Chester County.  This new system is required by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Report and Order #92-235 that requires radios in certain frequency bands to   reduce from 25 Kilohertz (KHz) bandwidth to 12.5 KHz channel bandwidth by Jan. 1, 2013.  For Chester County this order could only be met with a new system.  In the new system, Motorola Solutions will provide the replacement paging units (Minitor V) and ARINC will provide the system infrastructure.  The Requests for Proposal for the two components were developed by fire, fire police, and EMS responders and members of the Department of Emergency Services (DES) staff under the leadership of the county’s consultant, ACD Telecom.  The same committee reviewed the proposals and made the selection recommendation to the Commissioners. Current plans are to have the new system installed and operational by Oct. 1, 2012.