The Knox County 911 Center dedicated its new radio system Wednesday morning as a digital radio migration begins for county first responders.
Nearly 30 years after its last major radio system upgrade, county first responders are putting down the analog handheld radios that have served them well and moving to a new digital Motorola radio system that will allow agencies to communicate seamlessly between each other.
The transition will take a little more time to be implemented completely for all county first responders, but the new radio system is now up and running for county dispatchers and should be fully implemented by November, according to Knox County E-911 director Alan Bull.
"Our main topic today is that our radio system, is up and running, it's ready to have the users transition over to it, new consoles are in, and dispatchers are dispatching on the new consoles," Bull said. "It's been a long project, but we are at that point now that the agencies will transition over."
The transition to these new digital radios has been a long time coming for the county. After more than a year of debate, the E-911 County Board approved a nearly $9 million contract with Motorola for the new system in July 2016.
Board members pondered for a full year after Harris Communications won the bid for the initial contract, refusing to sign off on it. Members led by Knox County Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones said they preferred to stick with Motorola for the contract.
The new radio system will be progressively rolled out to each first responder organization within the county, including Knoxville police, county deputies, Knoxville fire crews, Knox County Rural Metro and others.
Mark Wilkbanks, the assistant chief of the Knoxville Fire Department, said the new digital system isn't going to radically change how the departments communicate with each other, but will provide noticeable improvements and make it easier for them to talk between each other compared to the older system.
"One of the things is we are going from an old analog system to a newer digital system, so ideally the radio system coverage and radio itself will be a better with clearer radio transmissions when you're communicating across the system," he said. "We are basically upgrading from about a 1985 model car to a 2018 model car."
Wilkbanks said the new system will allow city fire crews to seamlessly communicate with other county first responders on all systems.
E-911 said the digital system has the capability to encrypt radio channels to keep them from being picked up publicly, but not all channels will use the function.
KCSO and KPD both have said they intend to use the encrypted channels to improve officer safety, but some members of the community say law enforcement should continue to operate generally on a non-encrypted net for transparency and other reasons.
KCSO said it hopes to have all its radios switched over to the new system by August.
