Voice paging vs Alpha numeric

Voice or Alpha paging


  • Total voters
    12

paff2

Member
Nov 30, 2010
842
Lancaster, PA
 Our county is in the process of switching all radio transmissions to a P25 system. The next thing on the list (in a few years) will be paging. Our current paging is done on 33.90 and parts are harder and harder to find so hence the need for change. One option they are considering is strictly Alpha numeric paging. Another option is both voice and Alpha.

My question to those using Alpha, especially if you switched from voice sometime in your career. Pros and cons?
 

tsquale

Lifetime VIP Donor
Oct 12, 2010
10,511
Minnesota, USA
I have used both and prefer Alpha. I currently work for a private EMS system and we both page via voice on the common talk group and an alpha page is automatically sent to the crew when a call is assigned to them. It works well because we get instant voice verification from the crew after we voice page and they get the alpha page to verify the address. It eliminates the need for us to repeat addresses to the crews since they have it on the pager. Paging by voice acts as a back up should their pager fail and allows other crews to know where their partners are responding.
 
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Steve0625

Member
Jun 23, 2010
1,213
Northville NY
The county I worked in had a massive alpha system. They still use voice alerting for fire and ems, but the alpha system handles so much more. All the CAD events get routed to all the pagers in each agency, the alpha pagers are single and group addressable so there can be any number of groups assigned to any pager. So if you belong to a fire department and a separate volly ambulance and work for the water department, you get all the pages from those agencies that you need. Every 911 employee was issued one, and they could be group addressed by shift, job title, special groups like TERT and so on. Any governmental employee anywhere in the county could get one, and many departments and agencies beyond public safety.

I really liked the fact that they still did traditional tone voice alerting on the fire and ems channels AND at the same time, routed the CAD event to the alphas. BTW, the system was set up so that when your agency got assigned to a CAD event, the alpha page was automatic. No special buttons to push or procedures to remember. Just do the tone and voice alert via CAD and out goes the alpha page to the proper pagers.
 
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tsquale

Lifetime VIP Donor
Oct 12, 2010
10,511
Minnesota, USA
The county I worked in had a massive alpha system. They still use voice alerting for fire and ems, but the alpha system handles so much more. All the CAD events get routed to all the pagers in each agency, the alpha pagers are single and group addressable so there can be any number of groups assigned to any pager. So if you belong to a fire department and a separate volly ambulance and work for the water department, you get all the pages from those agencies that you need. Every 911 employee was issued one, and they could be group addressed by shift, job title, special groups like TERT and so on. Any governmental employee anywhere in the county could get one, and many departments and agencies beyond public safety.

I really liked the fact that they still did traditional tone voice alerting on the fire and ems channels AND at the same time, routed the CAD event to the alphas. BTW, the system was set up so that when your agency got assigned to a CAD event, the alpha page was automatic. No special buttons to push or procedures to remember. Just do the tone and voice alert via CAD and out goes the alpha page to the proper pagers.
Our system is set up like this as well
 

qball

Member
Jan 10, 2011
117
South Carolina
Our county switched to alpha paging about 8 years ago.  Our voice paging channels were extremely inadequate (regarding coverage) and couldn't be expanded because of co-channel congestion so our options were limited.  

Considering that most of our departments are volunteer and not all volunteers are issued P25 radios, the idea of using alpha pagers took some getting used to.  We have adapted and overcome and most folks would't give up their alpha pagers for anything now.  As adjuncts, many of our departments use Active911 and eDispatches to receive our CAD messaging via cell phones, but they are completely dependent on the reliability of the cell phone networks which can be problematic at times.

Today, we dispatch on a primary EMS or fire talk group on the P25 trunked system and CAD pushes the alpha message to a completely separate, but county-owned, alpha paging network and to the cell phone text message services.   The alpha page generally arrives at the pager within 15 seconds.

It works, and works well!
 
May 9, 2012
1,153
Central Florida
We have went from using the Minitor pagers (voice) to the new swissphone alpha pagers. It's really a hit and miss with them whether they work correctly and display all the call information. Half the time, all the pagers will say is "Dispa" when it should read the location, call type, call level etc.
 

Sparky_911

Supporting Donor
May 15, 2013
2,648
Central Illinois
Seems like this topic comes up quite a bit...I remember posting in a thread similar to this a while back...



We use voice (Minitors) where I'm at for vollie F/E paging.  Some depts. use I Am Responding as a supplemental notification system, but it is not tied directly to the county dispatch center (where I work).   The city uses mystateusa for some PD/FD things but its all done via the internet and does text to phone.  It works well (so far) but since it relies on internet/cell coverage I question the reliability in a disaster situation. 

There has been discussion of going to an alpha based system countywide, but from what I hear it will be cell phone based.  Personally I think relying on cell carriers for calls is a great backup but not as a primary system, at least in my area.
 

delcofirecop

Member
Jul 22, 2012
232
usa pa
My county is primary alpha paging. They do maintain a voice page channel as well and a lot of departments issue Motorola Minitor Pagers either Min4's or Min5's  we have little to none uncation pagers as our voice dispatch is low band with a high band simulcast. I personally use a personal Minitor 4 although i still have a older Minitor 2 from the 1980's  I hate the alpha paging for night time cause it will not wake me up at all. During the day it is ok we use apollo pilot pagers for the alpha system.
 

Shawn L

Member
May 21, 2010
2,477
Corbett, Oregon
we switched from voice to alpha,many years ago  only issue we have here is that the alpha pagers are provided by a private company and their infrastructure. we have had few issues, there are many advantages to the alpha pagers, like no such think as silent on a voice pager.. multiple alert tones are nice too. . calls are sent out over vehicle MDT's as well as manually aired over the dispatch channel, were 1 of 2 volly depts in our county so not every member gets a radio
 

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