1. technology and computing

Ottawa County, Michigan
Central Dispatch Authority
HIGHLIGHTS
ABOUT OTTAWA COUNTY
The Ottawa County Central Dispatch Authority is the communications center
Fusion’s multi-network capability
between the citizens, visitors and public safety agencies of Ottawa County and
bridges the divide between disparate
provides an effective method of accessing emergency services through
agencies, networks and applications
professional and courteous public safety communication and dispatch services
to deliver wireless broadband data
for the sheriff, police, ambulance and fire departments.
connectivity over public and private
cellular networks
THE CHALLENGE
Ottawa County Central Dispatch has relied on CalAmp solutions since 2001.
Fast, silent dispatch via VPN over LTE
Although the existing CalAmp private narrowband radio technology was sufficient
is more secure than traditional
for older applications the new Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) software was
private radio
scheduled to be implemented which required Ottawa County to explore solutions
that would provide them with higher bandwidth and greater functionality for its
Enables enhanced situational
sheriff and police patrol vehicles and other emergency response vehicles. The
awareness between incident
solution had to be B14 capable, yet backward-compatible with existing
command, dispatch and first
infrastructure to provide reliable connectivity and a smooth transition.
responders
Part of Ottawa County’s strong desire to work with CalAmp was its successful
track record with CalAmp’s data radio solutions during the previous 14 years.
“When we were ready to massively upgrade our technology, we were very
comfortable turning to CalAmp,” said Mark A. Jongekrijg, Ottawa County’s Data
and Radio Systems Manager.
Despite Ottawa County’s comfort level with CalAmp as a vendor, Ottawa County
went through a testing phase in which they tested CalAmp’s Fusion multi-network
LTE router along with another competitive solution.
In order to fairly test the two solutions, the Ottawa team mounted both solutions
at different times in patrol vehicles. In each vehicle, either the CalAmp Fusion or
the competitive router was tested for a two-week period. Each unit was then
Case Study
switched out for the alternative for an additional two weeks of testing. This
provided both CalAmp and the competitive solution testing in equivalent
conditions and the opportunity for officers to test the routers in the field and
with their live applications.
THE SOLUTION
Ottawa County chose CalAmp on the basis of features such as GPS routing and
more flexible configurability, as well as a long history with CalAmp. “The trial with
CalAmp was outstandingly successful,” commented Jongekrijg regarding the
testing phase of the selection process.
As a result, Ottawa County installed CalAmp Fusion 4G LTE routers in
approximately 150 law enforcement vehicles including marine vessels used in the
Fusion™
Mission-Critical Multi-Network LTE Router
patrol of Lake Michigan. With its ability to provide concurrent wireless data
connectivity over dual public and private LTE cellular networks, such as FirstNet,
with failover capability to eliminate a single point of failure, Fusion provides
simultaneous support of both public cellular and state-of-the-art private LTE
networks. In addition, the technology paves the way for Ottawa County to make a
smooth transition to the FirstNet network once available.
“Fusion was compatible with the CalAmp units that we’re replacing, which means
that we didn’t need to change our existing software configuration,” said
Jongekrijg. “Being able to keep the current character ID system made the solution
much more cost effective since we didn’t need to reconfigure our messaging
switch but more importantly minimized the chance that there would be issues
once the Fusions were live in the field.”
RESULTS
“With the Fusion, we are looking toward the future knowing that these changes in
With the Fusion, we are looking
toward the future knowing that
these changes in technology
such as CAD upgrades and new
records management software
were coming.
Mark A. Jongekrijg
Data & Radio Systems Manager
Ottawa County Central
Dispatch Agency
technology such as CAD upgrades and new records management software were
coming,” commented Jongekrijg.
With 150 Fusion broadband routers currently deployed, Ottawa County is well
poised to seamlessly integrate the new CAD software scheduled for
implementation and take advantage of all the key features that require
high-bandwidth connectivity. The Fusion will enable police officers to access
resources in the field, including the prior history of calls at a dispatch address.
With Fusion now deployed, vehicles can become a true network extension to
headquarters and provide fast, reliable and high-resolution access to resources
and applications that were previously unavailable in the field. This provides
improved situational awareness between incident command, 911 dispatch and
first responders in the field.
About CalAmp
CalAmp (NASDAQ: CAMP) is a proven leader in providing wireless communications solutions to a broad array of
vertical market applications and customers. CalAmp’s extensive portfolio of intelligent communications devices,
robust and scalable cloud service platform, and targeted software applications streamline otherwise complex
machine-to-machine (M2M) deployments. These solutions enable customers to optimize their operations by
collecting, monitoring and efficiently reporting business-critical data and desired intelligence from high-value
remote assets. For more information, please visit www.calamp.com.
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