Manufacturers of two-way radios recommend annual preventative maintenance to ensure proper performance and compliance with FCC regulations.  It is estimated that manually testing each two-way radio costs $100 to $120 including the technician’s rate and the time of the end user. If a community has 1500 radios on their system, then the total cost amounts to $150,000 to $180,000 for each maintenance check. Depending on the size of a system, a technician could spend the better part of his year scheduling radios to come in, doing maintenance, and following up on those who did not come in. That is the price and time necessary to provide hands-on preventative maintenance.

Some agencies are still keeping expensive service contracts on all their radios. Others have cut that expense and chosen to be self-maintained.  Many, however, are unable to actually complete the annual maintenance.  The result is that radios which are mission critical devices for public safety personnel where failure should not be an option are at increased risk of a hard failure. No one can put an exact value on the lives of first responders and citizens when radio communications fail.

Agencies throughout the US and Canada are meeting this challenge using LocusUSA’s DiagnostX over-the-air waveform analyzer. This patented system enables public safety departments to identify, verify and analyze all the radios on the network while they are deployed in the field.  The only time a radio is brought in for calibration is when the technician decides to bring it in based on DiagnostX threshold reports. Typically 15-20% of radios are out of spec and need service, resulting in substantial savings while ensuring optimal system performance.  This type of hands-on preventative maintenance again makes sense.  Contact [email protected] to see the ROI numbers for your system.