Question about police and the GWN

[lolbananalol2]

Hi everyone
The other day I went to listen to the Cairns police radio feed and there was a message that said it looked like they'd gone digital and the feed was offline. Does anyone know if this is true or not? I was listening to a different feed that covers the area in and around Cairns and I was able to hear one of the police channels that The feed covers but I'm not sure if it's for the same area or not. Also, when I was looking at frequencies On the acma database that are registered in the area, I noticed some frequencies that are licenced to the group that runs the gwn in the southeast. Does this mean the gwn is spreading further or is this for something else?

[Eyestothefloor]

Not sure if it is related but I have noticed in the last week or 2 that I’ve been hearing chatter 3x the original range (listening on the Wide Bay frequencies).

First I only heard about incidents in towns maybe 100km away, now I can hear down to the NSW border and Northern Territory border.

I did notice it was after some pretty bad storms, maybe some towers got damaged and they sent people out to repair and realign the antennas.


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[gasgrassorarse]

they're mostly using encrypted digital transmissions now plus ipad and mobile phone.

There are exceptions, I'm mostly in a different district but still hear "some" traffic south of Gladstone.

Pretty rare to hear anything of minor interest nowdays.

[lolbananalol2]

Sorry about the late reply. That does sound quite strange. I wonder what could be going on.

Not sure if it is related but I have noticed in the last week or 2 that I’ve been hearing chatter 3x the original range (listening on the Wide Bay frequencies).

First I only heard about incidents in towns maybe 100km away, now I can hear down to the NSW border and Northern Territory border.

I did notice it was after some pretty bad storms, maybe some towers got damaged and they sent people out to repair and realign the antennas.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[lolbananalol2]

they're mostly using encrypted digital transmissions now plus ipad and mobile phone.

There are exceptions, I'm mostly in a different district but still hear "some" traffic south of Gladstone.

Pretty rare to hear anything of minor interest nowdays.

I only just noticed this reply. Sorry about that. I thought the encryption was mostly confined to the southeast corner of the state. At the moment. I'm still hearing radio traffic on other police streams through my phone.

[gasgrassorarse]

they're mostly using encrypted digital transmissions now plus ipad and mobile phone.

There are exceptions, I'm mostly in a different district but still hear "some" traffic south of Gladstone.

Pretty rare to hear anything of minor interest nowdays.

I only just noticed this reply. Sorry about that. I thought the encryption was mostly confined to the southeast corner of the state. At the moment. I'm still hearing radio traffic on other police streams through my phone.

As far as I'm aware it's been in trial\use in city areas for at least 1-2 years now. There's apparently alot of issues where they transition to rural areas with large area coverage and low population density and still have to use the analogue freqs\phone\ipad.

[Eyestothefloor]

Yeah ok, I hear frequent chatter on the Sunshine Coast but nothing in Brisbane yet I’ll have to get closer and see what I can hear


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[Kazzaw]

I need to visit this forum more often

Lately, Cairns has been pushed to Digital Encryption, however I don't believe they are operating on the GWN (with P25 Trunking) - However that's an odd 1,700kms for me to go to find out.

Its possible the regional areas would still be analog, but I'm not sure as to the level of deployment. Make no mistake though, QPS is slowly in the process of rolling out Digital Encryption to all areas, it's just going to take quite a while. Wireless backhaul links etc don't pop up overnight.

GWN (Operated by Telstra (maybe still?)) is only within the South East Corner, it is a full P25 Phase II Trunking system. I don't think we'll see an expansion of this system any time soon.. Too many $$$

[AusPTT]

I was in Cairns in September and there was definitely still analogue then, however there have also been a number of Digital and Encrypted channels across the Far North for some years for Special Operations. Some of the channels in Cairns were Digital, but not encrypted, they were always good to listen to because the cops thought they were secure (to some degree they were if people didn't know how to listen).

Townsville has also recently deployed a number of digital channels, but again I heard plenty of analogue when I was going through in September.

Mackay also has a small amount of digital channels and some of the regional areas have digital bases, but they rarely get used.

[Kazzaw]

The cairns to P25 was completed late October, so it would make sense to see analogue around then.