DuPage County is part of suburban Chicago, and in a 2005 census had 930,000 residents, making it the second-most populous county in the state (after Chicago’s Cook County). The Addison Fire Protection District is located in Addison Township, one of nine townships in the county, and it manages the communications network for its three fire stations as well as a connection to a centralized, multi-agency emergency dispatch center.

Traditionally, the Addison Fire Protection District (FPD) used a local dispatch center, but in mid-2008, it decided to use the services of Du-Comm — a multi-agency dispatch center. According to John Sullivan, an Addison FPD firefighter/paramedic who is in charge of communications for the organization, this move presented an opportunity to install a new radio link that offered better performance.

“The old microwave link handled voice traffic only, and we didn’t own it,” says Sullivan. “We wanted a more robust connection between us and Du-Comm that we owned and controlled,” he says, “and we wanted it to support voice and data.”

After consulting with other public safety agencies in the area, and based on his own experience consulting on deployment of radio communications systems for other public agencies in the greater Chicago area, Sullivan chose an Exalt EX-4.9i radio system. “We wanted to be in the licensed public safety radio band, and Exalt was highly recommended by other organizations.”

The Exalt 4.9i system uses Exalt’s CarrierTDD™ technology to deliver guaranteed throughput for T1 voice and Ethernet data with the high availability full security. The deployment of these services occurred in two stages, starting with voice.

During two days in August of 2008, Sullivan contracted with A Beep, one of Illinois’ largest designer and operator of specialized radio systems, to deploy one Exalt EX-4.9i radio and antenna on a water tower at Addison Fire Station number two, and…

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