If your fire/EMS department is not receiving alphanumeric pages / text messages from the BCSO dispatch center, it is a known issue. This does not affect dispatching, VHF fire paging or other radio systems.
From BCSO Computer Services:
We are experiencing some difficulties with our Fire/EMS paging systems that began after the phone system was recently upgraded. The paging system uses modems and analog phone lines to send the paging information for many of the phone providers who then distribute the messages to the phone subscribers.
Since the telephone system was moved, it appears the quality of the analog lines has experienced some degradation in quality, latency, or other factor that is preventing the modems from connecting cleanly with the telephone providers thus causing an abnormally high failure rate. It seems to vary by phone provider.
As we monitored this situation, it became clear that the analog line method of delivery has become too unreliable. Therefore, we will be migrating recipients over to an Internet based technology where the messages will be delivered to the phone providers as an “email” which will then be delivered to recipients phones as text messages.
There are a large number of recipients in our system and it will take some time to migrate them over.
We apologize for this situation, but this was one of many unexpected consequences of the telephone system migration and beyond our access to repair.
Comments are closed