Help with Understanding Alphanumeric Paging Stations.

[firebuff17]

Hello,

I am looking on some insight on Alphanumeric Paging.

We are looking at adding, as a backup, alphanumeric paging our calls. At this point we can not do it at dispatch because they dont use CAD completly. They are Still punching tickets and not filling the form out on the computer. They are handwritting them still.
I already have an alphanumeric pager through Arch wireless along with many members of my fire dept. What I am looking to do is to add a paging station in the fire house that will connect to our pagers.
We want the coverage, statewide, that Arch has. We do not have the money to impliment our own full paging system. I dont even now what that entails fully, but from what I have read its alot of equipment.
As it stands right now we are looking at having somebody who is at the firehouse type and send a quick message when we get a call. There is usually somebody there for the most part and we need to have 2 people on the truck before it leaves so that person will be waiting for a second rider. Thats how we are looking at implementing it now.
I did some searching around on the net to try and figure this out but I dont know enough about it to make any determinations.
What would we have to get to make this work, and if you know of an approximate price of such. Any information would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
firebuff17

[alex]

You might want to look at a piece of tracking software such as Red Alert which has a pager interface to it (I think).

There is a lot of paging software that you can get for the computer - Air Source (older program, but might exist somewhere), Page Gate is what I've seen a few departments used - you can setup a server with a couple of modem's attached to it - and any computer in the station can send out pages.

You can also create groups, etc.

You might want to approach your paging provider about it, they may have some internal stuff that you can use.

-Alex

[k2hz]

Have you talked to Arch about your requirements? They may be able to offer solutions.

The easiest, if you have a PC with email and an internet connection, is to send the message in the form of an email addressed to the pager(s). at the Arch terminal domain name.

Other solutions are a PC running TAP paging software and a dialup connection to Arch or small, standalone paging keyboard devices that do a dialup connection.

I was formerly involved with an organization that had several hundred pagers with Arch and we used all of the above solutions plus later integration with two CAD systems. If you need to alert several pagers with the same message you may want to talk to Arch about setting up a group call arrangement so you do not have to generate a separate message to each pager.

Some of the PC software is freeware or shareware but it can take a computer guru to set it up and you will probably need some technical details from Arch to configure it to work with their system.

Arch should be able to advise you about alternatives. It may take a little effort to get past the Arch counter or telephone customer service rep and talk to a knowledgeable technical person but Arch can and does support what you want.

[firebuff17]

Thanks for your help guys. I will check out those programs and will take advantage of the e-mailing the messages.

I will also try and talk to Arch because at the budget meeting the other day there is money in the budget to put computers in the trucks and dispatch will be sending the call info to the computer when we have a call. This means they will be taking full advantge of CAD and we might be able to set a program up to coincide with it so it Pages Automatically.

Thanks for the info.

[spareparts]

I just set up several PC's to do paging via the WTCP protocol. The carrier is USA Mobility (formerly Arch & Metrocall). This was an interim fix until we bring most of it back in house.

The application we are using is NotePager Pro http://www.notepage.com/ . The pager database is fairly small as we had the USA Mobility add a leader capcode to the individual pagers (reprogrammed). This way I can hit 50 pagers with one page, instead of sequentially sending 50 pages.

If you don't have broadband, they have modem input numbers in most areas. I'm using that as backup if the internet feed is down.

BTW, I thought a FD was supposed to own the infrastructure or the ISO rating is affected?