A Federal Communications Commission rule designed to make two-way radios more efficient by the end of the year has created a windfall for Connecticut companies, reprogramming old radios and selling new ones to businesses and municipalities.
“It has been a boom for us,” said Bruce Marcus, owner of Manchester radio dealer Marcus Communications. “Everybody is upgrading their radio systems because of the new rules.”
Marcus said his revenues have increased 30 percent this year directly because of the FCC’s new rule called narrowbanding. The initiative led the company to pursue a $1.9 million contract to convert the city of Meriden; the replacement of 1,500 radios at the Mohegan Sun resort casino in Uncasville; and upgrade every radio for security, facilities, and broadcast communications at ESPN’s 120-acre campus in Bristol.
“We already are booked solid in our schedule through the rest of the year,” said Ed Abrams, president of Hamden radio dealer Utility Communications, Inc. “We have put in some pretty substantial systems in this year.”
The FCC narrowbanding rule calls on radio operators to shrink the width of their communications channels from 25 kilohertz to 12.5 kHz. With everyone using a narrower band, the FCC can award more radio licenses in the limited spectrum capacity. By staying within the narrower band, radio users’ conversations won’t spill over in others’ channels.
“It is like narrowing the beam of your flashlight; that’s the best I can explain it,” Marcus said.
FCC first proposed narrowbanding in the 1990s with a conversion deadline of Jan. 1, 2013, so the industry has prepared for this switch for the past 15 years, said Hugh Johnston, purchasing manager of national radio dealer BearCom. The switch impacts everyone including manufacturers, school districts, fire and police departments, golf courses, transportation systems, power plants, and basically every organization with a space large enough to require radio communications.
Since narrowbanding was first proposed, radio manufacturers have worked to increase the capability of their products to meet the new regulation. Almost every new radio sold in the past 7-10 years can be reprogrammed for narrowbanding, Johnston said.
ESPN has been preparing for the switch for the past decade, upgrading its equipment within the past 10 years, and finishing narrowbanding five years ago, said ESPN spokesman Mike Soltys.
“We like to get things done as far in advance as possible,” Soltys said.
Most radio users weren’t as proactive as ESPN, with the majority of reprogramming and new radio sales taking place this year, Abrams said.
“It is just like everything else, everybody waits until the last minute,” Abrams said.
The Meriden public works department used Abrams’ Utility Communications in making a $210,000 radio upgrade for its highway, parks, water, sewer, traffic, and engineering departments. The city had radios older than 10 years and decided to add extra features to its infrastructure, such as GPS in all its new radios.
“We decided to do everything at once,” said Bob Bass, Meriden director of public works. “It was an old radio system, so we had to make a move toward narrowbanding anyway.”
With the infrastructure upgrade, Meriden eliminated spots of bad reception in the city, got better clarity with digital radios, and has the GPS to track movements of workers, said Bass.
“It gives me a little more information about what is going on in the field,” Bass said.
The Meriden Fire Department spent $710,000 over the past five years to upgrade its radio infrastructure and all the portable radios for its personnel. The department received $567,000 in grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the work.
“When we were specing out those grants, we included narrowbanding in the applications,” said David Bowen, Meriden deputy fire chief. “We planned this out in advance because we knew it was coming.”
Marcus and Abrams said 98-99 percent of their customers will be narrowbanded by the FCC deadline. Most of the holdouts are companies that believe the FCC won’t enforce the conversion or believe they can refuse to narrowband and not be noticed.
By all accounts — especially given the long lead time for the rule change — FCC is planning on cracking down hard on violators, Abrams said. This is especially true if the agency gets complaints from radio users about non-narrowbanded operators interfering with the communications on their channels, which also will be an easy way for the FCC to find unlicensed radio operators.
“Some people think they are exempt or FCC won’t do anything about it, but there will be heavy fines on this,” Abrams said.
FCC first required narrowbanding in the 1960s, switching radio operators from 50 kHz to 25 kHz. Once the narrowbanding conversion to 12.5 kHz is complete in 2013, the agency will switch its focus to narrowbanding down to 6.25 kHz, said Abrams.
The 6.25 kHz narrowbanding still hasn’t been announced yet, but it is likely around 2020, Abrams said, and this conversion also will require a switch to digital radios.
Then Connecticut’s radio dealers will get another boom.
