Franklin BOC Hears Third Option on New 911 System

Franklin County Commissioners have another 911 radio system provider to consider.

Franklin County is looking to upgrade its 911 dispatch system with new radios and dispatch consoles, but the cost of a new system is the big question for Commissioners as they continue to research and wend their way through the various proposals they’ve received so far.

At their work session Tuesday evening, the Board heard again from Trey Roberts of Southern Linc about what they can provide.

Owned by the Southern Company, Roberts said their system is designed to be “mission critical” and solely provided to State and county agencies.

Currently, he said the Southern Linc system is used by the Georgia State Patrol and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

Roberts said one of the advantages to their system, which would include new consoles and new L3Harris radios on an LTE network, is its redundancy.

Because they already have radio towers installed around the county, if the main system goes down for any reason, they can get clients back up and running within the hour.

Another advantage he said is that because they have towers already in place the County would not have to pay to have towers erected.

One downside according to Franklin County Sheriff Steve Thomas is because Southern Linc’s system is based on using the Internet, they don’t offer paging other than on their app.

Thomas said the volunteer firefighters need pagers with tone capability to alert them to emergencies.

After hearing again from Roberts, Commission Chair Jeff Jacques thanked him for his presentation but made no decision.

Asked by Commissioner Kyle Foster if there is a timeline in place to install a new 911 system, acting County Manager Terry Harris said he plans to be able to present “a pathway” for the new system at Board’s January meeting.

So far, the Board has not made decision on which system they want to go with.