Annapolis, Maryland, USA, August 1, 2012—ARINC Incorporated announced today that it was awarded a contract worth $20 million to provide a new public safety radio system for Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The contract was approved by the Lancaster County Board of Commissioners today and ARINC will commence work immediately.
ARINC will provide a state-of-the art system that will significantly improve emergency responders’ ability to communicate during incidents. The system also allows emergency personnel to communicate with multiple agencies that provide mutual aid from surrounding counties. The ARINC system provides improved coverage and capacity over the current conventional radio technology and replaces existing technology that is more than thirty years old.
“The new system will provide a dramatic improvement in the ability of First Responders to communicate with each other,” said Michael W. Weaver, Director of Lancaster County-Wide Communications. “With more than 390,000 police, fire, and EMS incidents a year, we are very excited to get started with ARINC and build a radio system that will support our mission to dispatch and communicate with more than 120 public safety agencies county-wide for years to come,” he added.
ARINC’s standards-based system ensures that the technology will support APCO Project 25 certified radios from multiple manufacturers, including Harris, Kenwood, Motorola, RELM, Tait, Thales, and others. The multi-vendor approach ensures that the County can leverage existing assets, obtain a best-of-breed solution, and maintain competitive pricing for radios now and into the future. Last week, ARINC supported Lancaster County in a demonstration of interoperability and operation of these radios on a single system to several public safety personnel. Another demonstration is planned on August 30.
“With a single vendor solution, radio prices either stay the same or increase over the life of the system,” stated Marvin Ingram, ARINC Senior Director of Public Safety Communications. “With ARINC, Lancaster County is not locked into one manufacturer and they will be able to compete for the best prices while taking advantage of future technology improvements,” he continued.
In a multi-phase integration, ARINC will implement a P25 infrastructure from Cassidian Communications, install a new Zetron console to support the P25 standard, and implement a new Exacom logging recorder. Aviat and Cisco networking equipment will also be upgraded to support the new radio system.
