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Oconee County emergency services delays radio channel switch, investigates responder-app outage
Summary
Commissioners and chiefs agreed to delay a planned switch from the dispatch channel to an operations channel until personnel are trained and radios reprogrammed; Chief Carroll also described a five-hour responder-app outage that interrupted call notifications.
Oconee County emergency services officials said they will postpone a planned change to radio channels to ensure crews receive training and radios are reprogrammed, and Chief Carroll reported a software issue that caused an interruption in call notifications earlier in the week.
The commission heard from Speaker 4, who said the scheduled change — moving some users from a dispatch channel to an operations channel — will be pushed back so "everybody's properly trained up" and radios can be reprogrammed by local contacts such as Aaron Smith or Zach. "We're gonna push it back to make sure everybody is up to date on how to do that," he said.
Carroll also described a software problem in the responder app that began Monday morning and left calls open for about five hours. "We had a gap for about 5 5 hours where it was not sending stuff out," he said, noting chiefs were notified to "monitor radio" while squads worked to restore normal operations. He credited outreach by squad chiefs for bringing the system back online.
Officials discussed that Active (active911) seat pricing and contract timing should factor into any technology changes; Carroll said seat pricing for the remainder of the current contract would be "just under $12 a seat" until the contract runs out in June. He urged chiefs to coordinate radio reprogramming and training before implementing the channel flip.
The commission did not take a formal vote on the channel-change schedule during the meeting. Next steps identified were completing training plans and confirming the reprogramming vendor and timeline before rescheduling the channel switch.
