The purpose of the program is to provide emergency response agencies with evidence that the communications equipment they are purchasing meets P25 standards for performance, conformance, and interoperability and offers demonstrated evidence of a product’s compliance with specific requirements. Police officers, fire personnel, emergency medical services, and other first responders need to exchange communications seamlessly across disciplines and jurisdictions to successfully respond to day-to-day incidents and large-scale emergencies. Unfortunately, until now, interoperability issues have existed, potentially compromising the success of emergency response operations. Emergency responders have had to carry multiple radios, depending on the agencies with which they need to communicate. Thales’s Liberty radio, approved earlier this year by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, is the first multiband, software-defined LMR designed specifically for government agencies and first responders to meet these challenges. The Liberty LMR operates in all modes, with full encryption, and enables multi-agency communications in all the public safety frequency bands (136-174 MHz, 380-520 MHz, 700 MHz, and 800 MHz). The Liberty radio works on current analog systems as well as P25 trunking systems, regardless of frequency range.
Trunking is used by many government entities to provide two-way communication for emergency responders who all share spectrum allocated to a city, county, or other entity. Trunking conserves limited radio frequencies and provides other advanced features to users. Successful completion of the CAP trunking interoperability test assures users of reliable compatibility when operating in the P25 trunking mode. Developed and manufactured at the company’s Maryland headquarters facilities, the Liberty radio is currently undergoing pilot testing under the DHS, Science and Technology Directorate, Multi-Band Radio Program.
