Little Rock Emergency Services Frequency Change

The City of Little Rock is having to change the frequency programmed into each of it's hundreds of radios used by the city's communication emergency net. This includes not only police, fire, and hospitals, but any agency that has radios tied into that network. The reason? A transition from one analog signal to a narrow band analog signal. They have four years to get it done, but they do have to comply with a federal mandate similar to TV stations having to comply with the analog to digital transition. 

Over the course of the four years, every first response agency in the country is supposed to make this transition. The idea is to free up space on the existing spectrum- a wide analog band- and move to a narrow analog band to allow more agencies to use a smaller chunk of the radio band. 

In White County, it will cost between $7,000 and $9,000 to make the transition for each of the dozen repeaters located throughout the county. 

The city of Searcy is nearly done with it's effort, as it has purchased new radio equipment for each new vehicle over the past two years. 

Several volunteer fire departments still need to make the transition. They have until 2013 to get it done, but have stated intentions to complete the project by the end of 2009.