Plans are underway to upgrade the communications system used by emergency responders in Simpson County.

Roger Solomon, chief of the Franklin Police Department, said the department is paying for the upgrades, which mainly involve the construction and outfitting of a new communications tower to work alongside a tower in the city limits that houses the county’s emergency services communications equipment.

Though the Simpson County Sheriff’s Office will use the new system as well, Solomon decided to have FPD pay for the upgrades, which includes $30,600 for the construction of the new tower on C Butts Road and about $2,500 to modify equipment in the existing tower in the city limits to make them compatible with each other, he said.

The sheriff’s office and the police department currently use the same communication system.

“I felt like it was of paramount importance to have two towers with the same capabilities,” he said.

The Franklin City Commission approved the purchase April 24.

The equipment in the new tower will be digital as opposed to analog, Solomon said.

“The biggest advantage is that it’s a newer system,” he said. “It’s not going to have some of the delays you may hear with analog.”

Currently, the county’s emergency services use the existing tower, which belongs to Mobile Communications Service, free of charge, he said.

FPD will pay $1,200 quarterly to rent the new tower from Mobile Communications, he said.

The police department is allowing the sheriff’s office to use the new updated system for free, but other agencies that want to use the system would have to help pay the rental fee. The amount they would be expected to pay would have to be negotiated with Mobile Communications, Solomon said.

Emergency Management Director Robert Palmer said the main shortcoming of the current system is that all the communications equipment is located in one tower, “and if that goes down, we’re going to be in trouble,” he said.

Another shortcoming of the current system is the presence of a few spots in the county where portable radios are unable to pick up the signal, Palmer said.

Each of these spots is “maybe a little bit bigger than a football field,” and has no effect on the radios used in emergency response vehicles, he said.

“We don’t have a whole lot of problems with that right now, but there’s always room to improve,” he said.

Another goal of the upgrade is to move closer to being compliant with Project 25, a Federal Communications Commission effort aimed at enabling emergency services across the country to communicate with each other, Palmer said.

Currently, the FCC does not have a deadline for communications systems to be P25-compliant, he said.

Emergency Management is looking at new equipment and grants to help cover the cost of the equipment needed to communicate with emergency services outside the county, Palmer said.

“It’s all geared toward getting emergency response agencies to have interoperability,” he said.

This story has been updated since its initial publication to clarify references to the Franklin Police Department’s and Simpson County Sheriff’s Office’s shared use of the communications system, as well as a reference to the negotiating party for other agencies wishing to join the new system.