At 9 am this morning, Cumberland County completed the upgrade of its radio system to the new Motorola P25 800MHz system from the aged Harris-Opensky 800MHz system that was in use from the late 2000’s. The new system brings better interoperability between jurisdictions as well as improved quality of communications with state-of-the-art technology.

With the implementation of new technology, the low-band (46.06 MHz) system was finally retired after 70 years of operation.The low-band system was still being utilized for paging and station alerting, simulcasting audio and tones from the 800MHz system.

Having used the low-band system since the 50’s, it’s seen plenty of technological improvements over the years. Attached are just some of the many devices that we’ve used over the years. Most of which, if powered on, still worked up until this morning.

Job well done to the team at Cumberland County Department of Public Safety, the team at Capital Area Communications, and any other involved parties for their hard work to get this system implemented.

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