Only one county has ever tried to privatize its 911 dispatch center. Matt Brown As noted in question two, states have made significant investment in radio technology. Technology needs to be viewed in government as a strategic resource and one where you attempt to maximize utilization. Shared-use unified networks are to the best benefit of the mass of users, and in the end, it's the true consumer, the public who gets served by the shared network and not just in the public safety sector but the government enterprise as a whole. The most important piece of equipment a police officer carries is a radio.
Shared systems are definitely the answer.
It makes no economic sense to build separate overlapping radio networks . In Greater Vancouver, we have 15 police jurisdictions serving a metropolitan area of 2 million. In addition, we have fire and EMS agencies maintaining radio networks in the same coverage areas. We do not have interoperability today, and many of the agencies, and not just the small ones, experience marginal coverage and high maintenance costs. Don Evans Shared state-managed radio systems may work in states with sparse population and no major metropolitan areas.