Comms Centres

[SteveNSWP]

Hey I asked this before and was told that there were about 20 or so communications centres in QLD. But I;ve read a few posts that suggests a merger of centres. Are they reducing their comms centres because they are doing it here in NSW as well.

What comms centre are being merged and what centres exist now?

Also how many districts are on a channel?

Cheers,

Steve.

[Comint]

Hey I asked this before and was told that there were about 20 or so communications centres in QLD. But I;ve read a few posts that suggests a merger of centres. Are they reducing their comms centres because they are doing it here in NSW as well.

What comms centre are being merged and what centres exist now?

Also how many districts are on a channel?

Cheers,

Steve.

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable than I can answer your questions, but I would just like to say that I think the NSW Police is going to come unstuck 'big time' with so few comcentres. It is my understanding that NSW used to have six BIG comcentres (a mistake by itself), but now only have three (an even worse mistake).

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Comint

[SteveNSWP]

Hey Comint,

Your partially right, we had six comms centres and are now down to five. They have only closed one which was Wagga and was probably the smallest of the centres. It only ran three radio channels compared to sydney which runs about 9 channels. The three Wagga channels were not too busy so they merged them into 2, so I can actually see a good reason to close the centre. No point throwing money into a comms centre that only runs two channels.

The plan here is to close down all comms centre and leave two running. There's good and bad points for both. With technology they can run the state entirely from sydney and from one centre which was the original plan. I think they have decided that they should have two now incase of a terrorist attack ect should disable one centre all comms can be tranferred to the other. Our state is not as big as yours so I think two comms centres for NSW is a good and realistic idea. The problems I see is that they are creating the two centres in Sydney. BIG mistake if Sydney gets taken out. Also half the channels are city/metro and the other half are country. Meaning City operators are dispatching country units with no real idea of local knowledge, call out procedures, distances and location of suburbs/towns. As the dispatchers are more commonly on City channels they never really learn the layout of the country.

Realistically they should have one sydney centre and one country centre. Sydney has the metro channels and say Tamworth takes all the country channels. I mean having more comm centres is realistically better, but technology and society is advancing all the time, and when things come down to the mighty dollar you have to expect change. I doubt if a similar thing for QLD would work though, you have alot of ground to cover and would need more comm centres. Unfortunately with Digital technology, QLD will find itself losing comms centres eventually too. From other posts it sounds like this is already happening with some amalgamations.

[Daniel]

Sorry for the late reply, I havent been on in a while.

There are no plans for anymore huge communication centres. The QPS have just finished upgrading radio systems up north in specific communication centres to some company called Zetron. Only "big" comms centres is North Coast Region & PCC Brisbane. There are plans for South-Eastern Region but thats about all.

Further to last QPS have also been with the Zetron network its just a newer system that would cost a lot to get in one communication centre so they wouldnt be combining them in a rush.

[SteveNSWP]

Cheers Dan,

How are the districts devided up by channels?

IE: Here we have 2 - 3 Commands to a channel. Some channels will have four sometimes five but typically 2-3.

Just curious how QLD devide them up.

Steve.

[Comint]

Sorry for the late reply, I havent been on in a while.

There are no plans for anymore huge communication centres. The QPS have just finished upgrading radio systems up north in specific communication centres to some company called Zetron. Only "big" comms centres is North Coast Region & PCC Brisbane. There are plans for South-Eastern Region but thats about all.

Further to last QPS have also been with the Zetron network its just a newer system that would cost a lot to get in one communication centre so they wouldnt be combining them in a rush.

Zetron are just manufacturers / suppliers of 'mission critical' communications equipment, such as dispatch consoles, telephone systems etc. It is not really a Network (except in-house). It's called 'mission critical' just so they can charge 'big bucks', it fails just like everything else.

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Comint

[SteveNSWP]

So does anybody know how are the districts are devided up by channels in QLD and roughly how many channels there are?

IE is it two districts to a radio channel?

Cheers,

Steve.

[Daniel]

The only communication centres within Queensland that have multi-district channels are as follows;

1. PCC Brisbane (Every channel in Brisbane has two districts on it except South Brisbane District)
2. PCC Gold Coast (Gold Coast and Coomera District are on the same channel)
3. NCRPCC Maroochydore (They have Caboolture and Redcliffe operating on the same channel)

The rest of the communication centres within Queensland are in the district that they cover so they dont actually cover any other districts. E.g. Cairns only covers Cairns, Ipswich only covers Ipswich etc...

Cheers,
Dan

[SteveNSWP]

Thanks Dan for that info, very helpful. I was just wondering who covers the Dalby, Warwick and Maryborough Districts. Do they have there own channel and where is it based from?

Cheers,

Steve.

[pagertones]

warwick/dalby is toowoomba

marybourough is cover by bundy comms.. im pretty sure they still exist.. :sc if not its maroochy comms that covers wide bay burnett region

[Daniel]

Warwick, Dalby, Charleville and Roma all operate on a country channel where the untis just contact the AO3 or Sergeant at the station. 000s for those areas are answered by PCC Toowoomba and are phoned through to the local police stations. I believe Dalby has a base unit in the station monitoring Toowoomba PCC out west is very unorganised as someone said somewhere else on this site QPS is nowhere near as organised with communications out there as QFRS is! Maryborough has its own police communications centre. Maroochydore only covers Redcliffe/Caboolture and Sunshine Coast at this stage.

[rossmutz]

Here in Mount Isa there are two channels in the city. One is used all the time for contact with VKR Mt Isa and the other operates for special events.

There is a channel also covering part of the way to Camooweal and another located between Mount Isa and Cloncurry as well as one in Cloncurry.

Most of the cars have both HF antennas and satphone antennas.

QFRS operates through Firecom Northern in Townsville which has 2 repeaters in town, one in Cloncurry and one in Mary Kathleen. The auxiliary stations other than Cloncurry work via satphone.