It was the summer of 2019. The weather was good, and with school out, it was the time to address the improvements and upgrades they discovered they needed over that school year. The school district used the local dealer’s multi-site repeater system (unfortunately not Icom’s) to communicate district-wide. There was just one problem with a single school – their radios didn’t work inside the school. So, Rick, the school district’s IT tech, called their dealer to help solve this problem.
It was one of their newest schools and was seen as a showcase for the district. Everyone who toured the school found it to be remarkable. Well laid out with state-of-the-art technology. And to top it off, beautiful glass and metal architecture. Their showcase school’s radio problems were a blemish they wanted to erase.
As an elementary school, teachers and students spent a lot of time both inside and out. When they went outside, a radio went with them. Inside the admin office, a desktop radio sat. It had an antenna on the roof that allowed the office staff to talk to the teachers outside, the buses throughout the district, and other schools – just not to any radios inside. The sharp-looking architecture of glass and metal blocked the RF signal from penetrating the building.
The first thought was to run a DAS throughout the school to get the signal everywhere it needed to be inside. This potential solution received a cool reception, “You want to do what to my new school?!” Understood – no DAS. After some head-scratching and what-iffing, the dealer, who was also an Icom dealer, remembered Icom had a Wireless LAN radio – the IP100H.
The dealer, now armed with that knowledge, called Icom’s sales manager to see if the IP100H might be the best solution. Of course, if the only issue were getting radios to work inside the school, the IPARS IP100H technology would work like a dream over its extensive WiFI system. All we would need to do is drop in the IP1000C controller, create an SSID for the radios to use,
and training them how to use it (which should take about 10 minutes).
But it’s never that easy. The school still wanted the radios inside the school to talk to the desktop radio on the SMR repeater system. Although the radios on the playground could be the existing SMR handheld radios, they didn’t want the staff to have two different radios to use – IP100H inside and the SMR portable outside. As it turned out, the IP100H worked nearly everywhere on the playground, and with the addition of a single outdoor WiFi access point, the coverage would become 100%.
With that problem solved, the only remaining issue was communication between the desktop SMR radio and the IP100H. As it turns out, that is an easy one, too. Icom’s VE-PG4 Radio over IP gateway has a built-in IPARS controller and the ability to bridge disparate technologies. Once introduced, the teachers with the IP100H could talk onto the SMR system anywhere in the district!
The complete solution was reasonably simple once discovered. A VE-PG4 with a built-in IPARS controller with a donor SMR radio was all it took to integrate the Wireless LAN IP100H radios to the existing SMR desktop and bus radios. The solution was so attractive; the other district schools wanted to migrate their systems to Icom’s IPARS IP100H radio to have the same capabilities. An unexpected benefit was also discovered. During emergencies when the entire school district needed to hear an alert, or while the staff is in-transit to other campuses, the school district’s IP network carried the voice to each school using the IP100H, while the SMR system reached the bus radios on the road.
The solution was cost-effective, simple to set up, and had coverage across the entire district, inside and out.
