Paulding County says new P25 radio system meets contract targets; 30-day live test begins
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Summary
Paulding County 9-1-1 staff told commissioners the county's new public-safety P25 radio system exceeded contract coverage and reliability targets during field and acceptance testing and will enter a 30-day "burn-in" with 28 test radios before a planned January cutover.
Paulding County 9-1-1 Center Director David Mumford updated the Board of Commissioners on the county's multi-year upgrade to a public-safety grade P25 radio system, saying the new network met or exceeded the coverage and reliability requirements spelled out in the county's contract with Motorola.
Mumford told commissioners the system moved the county from two legacy transmit sites to 12 broadcast sites and shelters, added 14 microwave hops and now supports about 1,700 radios countywide, including more than 300 school buses. The upgrade includes a mirrored backup dispatch center, fire-station alerting using Mach Alert, over-the-air programming and rekeying (OTAP/OTAR), and remote video security at each tower site.
"The coverage of the system is outstanding," Mumford said, reporting metrics the project team gathered during coverage acceptance testing: the 6 dB (indoor) requirement was met at 99.5%, 0 dB (street-level) at 99.9%, and the more stringent 20 dB criteria for certain industrial and medical corridors met or exceeded contract thresholds. He said field acceptance testing and redundancy checks (simulated failures of sites and network links) were completed successfully.
County staff described steps before full cutover: starting a 30-day operational test with 28 "super-user" radios to stress the system in real-world conditions and to exercise emergency-button and roaming functions with neighboring systems (Cobb Regional and WARS). Mumford said portables will be cut over first—planned for the second week of January—followed by staged mobile installs in vehicles. If the 30-day test fails in any significant way, Motorola must remedy the issue and the 30-day period restarts.
Mumford said the county has been using parts of the new system for training and that school buses and school safety officers have operated on it since August with no complaints. County staff also said the system allows interoperability with surrounding counties and outlined a plan to finalize the project by March 2026.
What happens next: the county will begin the 30-day burn-in testing; vendors and county responders will run exercises and report any issues to Motorola for remediation before the targeted January cutover to portables and eventual completion in March 2026.