Can Staffing Be Linked to Fed Narrowbanding?

In an odd twist, a township police chief says that if the federal government has its way, he’ll have to disband the township’s public safety comm center, and lose all their local experience and expertise when dispatching operations are moved to Beaver County’s comm center. Moon Township (Penn.) chief Leo McCarthy puts the blame on the FCC’s 2013 deadline to convert radio systems to narrowband frequencies, part of a plan to make spectrum use more efficient. McCarthy says his dispatchers know the township and its people, and also handle walk-in visitors to the police station, which the county’s dispatchers could not do. McCarthy didn’t mention actual costs, or that the FCC established the narrowbanding requirement in 2004, with a Jan. 1, 2013 deadline. Read more here.