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The RFP 's have been examined in depth and staff recommends Henkels & McCoy, Inc., of Orlando, Florida, be awarded a contract for the study at a cost not to exceed $7,672.00. The completion date for the preliminary study is March 20, 1992. This would provide a short time frame for the information to be conveyed to the Board in order for a determination to be made as to the merit of filing the FCC application to secure the channels allocated to the county area. If approved, the application would have to be completed by April 8, 1992, to leave some small window of time in case during review by APCO, DIVCOM, and the Regional Committee, modifications have to be made to the very technical application for formal submission by May 7, 1992. - It should be noted that Brevard County has just come on line with their 800MHz Public Safety Trunking radio system. Osceola County is moving rapidly to bring their system on line and St. Lucie County is in the process of preparing to go to bid for their system. Given this scenario, our county would be the only jurisdiction in the four county area with the old VHF and UHF system. That is not to say that Indian River County should arbitrarily do what other counties are doing. It is cause for concern, however, due to transmitter buffer zones specified in the plan and Indian River County's inability to talk with surrounding counties without spending some funds to minimally interface communications systems. ALTERNATIVES AND ANALYSIS Trunked radio :is relatively new technology that has enormous capabilities. A trunked radio system gets its name from the "trunk" line used in commercial telephone communications. Simply put, a "trunk" is a communications path between two or more points, typically between the telephone company central office and one or more users. The trunk line is time shared by several different users, but each user of the telephone service is not aware of this sharing of lines. One party places a call to another party and the call is completed; the working of the telephone system is not readily apparent to the user. Radio communication over a trunked system is similar to the telephone system. The transmitting and receiving radio units can be thought of as the calling and receiving parties, and the transmitting equipment can be thought of as the telephone company equipment. Instead of telephone lines, the radio system uses radio channels to place calls. As with the telephone system, the radio users are not aware of which radio channel they are communicating over. All that is apparent, is that a communication path has been established between the radio and user. It is simply a more efficient way of getting the most out of a limited number of radio channels. It can provide technology and a method for transmission of data over the radio system as opposed to analog voice information from utility pumping or treatment plants for the utility facilities/departments in the county. It has the capability to provide traffic engineering departments to control signaling devices at intersections at locations throughout the county from a single control point. Utility meter readers in the field could transmit data 'immediately to enhance operations and billing processes. There are many other applications which could be used in the public safety and law enforcement environments which could potentially reduce staff resources in terms of communications or modify the system size. 33 c' E B 18 1992 Boa