Annapolis, Maryland, December 12, 2011—In competitive bidding, ARINC Incorporated has been awarded the contract to provide enhanced electronics for the Chester County, PA Public Safety Digital Radio Paging Network.
The $2.6 million contract was approved by the County Commissioners November 17. Hundreds of fire and Emergency Medical Services personnel in the county rely on the paging system to support their mission-critical operations.
ARINC and its subcontractor, Sonik Messaging Systems of Vista, CA, will replace a large number of older radio frequency (RF) components on the 16-site county-wide paging network. The two companies have already started work, completing site evaluations and scheduling.
Ed Atkins, Chester County Director of Emergency Services, said the upgrade will help ensure reliability of the mission-critical paging network, and will meet the January 2013 Narrowbanding deadline of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Marvin Ingram, ARINC Senior Director, Public Safety Communications, said the new technology will provide a more efficient use of the radio spectrum and meet the County’s Narrowbanding requirement.
“Narrowbanding allows the creation of additional channel capacity, which is needed to support growing numbers of public safety radio users,” he said. “Chester County is one of the fastest growing counties in the northeast U.S., with about 500,000 residents and more than 57 local fire stations. The enhanced paging network will help maintain the county’s mission-critical communications at a high level of performance.”
ARINC is coordinating its work on the paging system with the County’s electronics and regulatory consultant and project manager, ACD Telecom, a leading national consultant on public safety radio communications systems. ACD is also the County’s consultant and PM for the Voice Radio Project, a much larger network upgrade that will convert the County’s Land Mobile Radio (voice radio) system to new digital technology.
ARINC Incorporated, a portfolio company of The Carlyle Group, provides communications, engineering and integration solutions for commercial, defense and
government customers worldwide. Headquartered in Annapolis, Maryland with regional headquarters in London and Singapore, ARINC is ISO 9001:2008 certified.
For more information, visit the web site at www.arinc.com.
