Batboard

Hello All,
I doubt this is really a new topic for some of you but here goes. We recently inventoried all of our mobile radios and were told by our local vendor that all the M1225 Radius units will need to be replaced to meet the Narrowband standard, both UHF and VHF. All research I've done to this point, both on this discussion board and other sources, say the M1225 'can be' compliant with the upcoming Narrowband standard in 2013. I'd like some input from the pros here on this board. I'm hoping our vendor is not just wanting to sell us nearly 30 new radios unnecessarily.

Your local vendor should familiarize themselves with Motorola radios, since the M1225 radios are in fact narrowband compatible, and that was the whole point of the M1225-- they were 12.5KHz and 25KHz compatible, hence the model name, M1225.

http://www.repeater-builder.com/motorol ... -sheet.pdf

Thanks for confirming my thoughts. As I ponder this assessment by the local guys, I wonder if there is more to the switch than I am aware of. These guys have always been helpful and I don't believe they would intentionally try to do us wrong. Answer me this, upon requesting a modified license from the FCC will they give us a new frequency and if so, is it possible that only certain radios can handle certain frequencies. Or is it simply a matter of changing the channel bandwidth to 12.5 regardless of what new frequency we may be assigned? Or, is it possible the local guys that handle our licensing already know what our new frequency range is likely to be and might fall out of the limits of this particular model of 1225?

Update: after pressing our local vendor based on your comments, they did some research and realized that they could indeed reprogram the 1225 thereby saving us literally thousands of dollars. Thanks for the quick and knowledgeable response.

Well I got one better, our vendor told us we had to replace all or CDM-155ls+ radios with MOTOTRBO radios. They were not happy when I presented documentation from Motorola that that wasn't the case. Personally I would find another radio shop , but I am not making those decisions. Same thing happened 15yrs ago when they said we had to replace all our Maxtracs because they wouldn't do 32 channels. I saved the department about $14K that time.
My understanding of the narrow banding of licenses is that the jury is still out, the FCC has NOT come up with a tried and true procedure yet as to how they intend to relicense the whole country. New and renewal licenses now come with new emission designators, and when you apply for narrow band you get a license with the new emission designator, and that's it. You don't get reassigned to a different channel. Actually I hope not, as I have about 150 stations and locations to relicense.
Personally I think the shops and license mills are taking advantage of this and charging people for relicensing, when in fact if you have a valid license for past the 01-01-2013 date (as I do on 99% of ours) you may not have to. The FCC may just convert all licenses in their database to narrow on their own. It would make more sense considering the costs involved. As I said no one knows yet.