MSCommNet Project

By Tom Driscoll, MSCommNet

OIT's MSCommNet project recently signed a significant contract with systems integrator Harris Communications.

MSCommNet is OIT's Maine State Communications Network project. It is four years into an eight year process to develop and commission a unified statewide land mobile radio network for State law enforcement, public safety, and public service agencies. The new system will utilize significant portions of the State's existing communications infrastructure with a modern technical foundation that addresses current and future technical needs and business requirements.

After a rigorous competitive bidding process that concluded earlier this year, the State and OIT selected a bid from a team lead by Harris RF Communications to deploy MSCommNet. The statewide system will include 40 sites throughout the State, guaranteeing mobile radio coverage across 95 percent of the state. Harris has more than 80 years of experience in the industry, successfully deploying more than 500 Land Mobile Radio (LMR) systems around the world.

The MSCommNet project falls under OIT's Radio Services Section\Network Services\Core Technologies. Shawn Romanoski directs the Radio Services Section and is also the key technical sponsor of the MSCommNet project.

Importantly, MSCommNet will allow Maine 's law enforcement, public safety and public service agencies to fully comply with the federal narrow banding initiative, which is designed to increase the number of available channels for communication while reducing the possibility of frequency interference. All public service communications systems must meet these federal mandates by December 31, 2012. OIT is committed to helping agencies around the state meet that timeline.

The MSCommNet system will provide Maine 's law enforcement, public safety and public service first responders with a number of benefits and new technical features and capabilities including:

Agency Autonomy: All of the State's public safety agencies will gain the advantages of a shared network but will remain autonomous within the system. Each agency will have independent secure partitioning, secure assigned talk groups and configuration clients allowing local control.
Expanded and Dependable Statewide Communication: Designated users will have the ability to communicate to any other user in Maine no matter the site, region or agency without dispatcher intervention.
Interoperability: MSCommNet will provide interoperability at three levels:
- Standards: The radios will operate on VHF, P25 and legacy analog networks
- Radio: Any vendor's P25-compliant radio will operate on the system
- Network: MSCommNet will interoperate with any system regardless of brand or band

MSCommNet will seamlessly integrate two proven technologies ( trunking and conventional) onto a single statewide network, offering transparency to the day-to-day law enforcement, public safety and public service user. The trunking technology will provide advanced feature sets and capacity efficiencies, while the P25 conventional component will reduce the power requirements of remote sites.

The new statewide radio system will be based on Harris' VIDA (Voice, Interoperability, Data, Access) Network technology, joining Nevada, Florida, Delaware and Pennsylvania in adopting statewide radio systems based on the proven land mobile radio (LMR) technology. The VIDA Network is a cost-effective, Internet Protocol (IP) -based interoperable radio communications technology that fully supports analog and digital radio communications systems, including the P25 (Project 25) Phase 1 and Phase 2 standards. VIDA also supports communications between new and legacy systems to provide seamless interoperability with other agencies, regardless of frequency band, radio brand or operating mode.

The MSCommNet team will be located at 290 State Street Augusta commencing August 31, 2009.

Article posted on: September 1, 2009
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