Lebanon County has primarily depended on a system of voice paging to dispatch the fire and ambulance services since the 1960s.  Voice paging has been an industry standard in many communities.  It was easy, relatively inexpensive, did not require dedicated equipment and to some extend the pagers could be used to monitor the radio (same radio used in dispatch as paging).  In recent years support for voice paging has faded.  As stated earlier the old low band radio frequencies used in this service have become crowded.  The rising noise floor (static or other radio interference in the background) has caused a lack of sensitivity to paging receivers and some equipment (paging parts, transmitters etc.) is no longer supported. Complaints about missed or failed pages multiplied.

In response to these issues Lebanon County designed a new paging system in conjunction with the new radio system.  The new paging system depends on UHF radio and digital messaging rather than the voice paging of prior years.  There were many reasons for this choice but some of the more significant were the availability of paging frequencies, compatibility with the new radio system infrastructure,  the licensing of transmitter power, duplication of equipment but  probably the most important was the compatibility with the new Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system.  Under CAD the appropriate emergency equipment is automatically selected by the computer which takes some human error out of the equation. This equipment as well as the location of the call and other relevant information is transmitted to the pager automatically.  In this way the page is sent out with greater accuracy and with less human intervention.  Despite some coverage issues (which are being addressed) and just plain resistance to change the current paging system is functional and reliable. Yes, there are individual cases where there has been a missed page or missing information. One must understand that when depending on a system like this for hundreds of pages a week that nothing will be perfect and there will be missed information.  The old paging system was no different.  There were regular and routine complaints about missed pages or the pager going off but not getting the voice message which required first responders to call the communications center (also delaying response) for the dispatch information.  It must also be recognized that while most areas of the county had an increase in reliability there may be some areas that suffered from losses in reliability.  Those areas have been identified and we are working to improve coverage in those areas.  A later section will outline the planned future improvements, completed improvements and improvements that are a current work in progress. 

For anyone interested in monitoring the pages as they are put out on the Lebanon County system please see:

   http://mail.lebanonema.org/pager/monitor.html

Daniel Kauffman

Director

Lebanon County Emergency Management