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. In states with heavily populated metropolitan areas, the needs for those areas are likely to be more sophisticated and require budgets that are large compared to the state requirements.
Spectrum control needs to be by an all-user management team.
Such a system may not be technically viable given the number of radio frequencies that would have to be licensed and the number of talkgroups that would have to be programmed and maintained. It would be a huge undertaking from an implementation standpoint. Several states have experimented with this approach only to find that many local jurisdictions want to control their own communications systems. Communications procedures, operational policy and resource deployment all play an important role in who controls the communications center operation. Eventually technology may evolve where these questions can be answered, but for now I can only see shared radio systems at the regional level and not statewide.