Capitol Monitor

Attached is a newsletter describing the new Prince George’s 700 MHz system (and inferentially Loudoun and Stafford counties as well), the proposed U.S. Capitol Police, and the Virginia STARS networks. RCC provides consulting services for Prince George’s, Stafford, and the State of Maryland.

One issue that we underestimated in Prince George’s was the negative reaction of the local press/monitoring community to the use of TDMA. Because no scanners can monitor Motorola’s X2 TDMA system or the forth-coming P25 Phase II technology, these very vocal members of the press and scanning community are not proponents of TDMA. When Prince George’s held its press conference in December, this was one of the major issues raised by the press including the Washington Post.

I have attached the newsletter as (FYI) background should there be an implementation of TDMA with one of your systems. Some thought should be included in the planning process relative to the ability of the press to monitor TDMA communications. This remains an open issue in Prince George’s as the press can still monitor the six basic patrol zones and Fire/EMS as traffic is being simulcast on both the new 700 MHz TDMA talkgroups as well as the legacy conventional analog channels. CID, Narcotics, and other specialized investigators have migrated to the new system with encrypted radios. Hopefully, all law enforcement cars in the County (+/- 1,500) will be converted with new APX7500 mobile radios by late spring.