Rockwall County, Texas is going with Harris Communications for an upgrade to its public service radio system. The contract was awarded during the second quarter of Harris’ fiscal 2016. The system will serve more than 600 users from the cities of Rockwall, Heath, Fate, Royse City and McClendon-Chisholm.
Rockwall will receive the new Harris APCO P25 Phase 2 system, which will include 900 mobile and portable digital radios. The system will also include a dispatch console solution and a mobile application for push-to-talk capability.
Notably, Harris will also provide communications interoperability with neighboring jurisdictions, regardless of the type of system they use. The company will also provide a firehouse alerting system that meets National Fire Protection Agency alerting standards through its partnership with Westnet.
Cities and states throughout the country are working to upgrade public safety and first responder communication systems. Many of these efforts are in response to the forthcoming FirstNet voice and data network designed specifically for first responders. In recent years, the public safety contracting opportunity set has grown considerably as state and local governments focus on modernization and look to use new technologies to improve communications in the field.
As CivSource has previously reported Sonim and Federal Engineering have also recently won contracts to provide new radios for public safety networks.