Chicomm Blog

As wireless communication solutions are constantly evolving, it’s a challenge to keep up with the latest and greatest devices and functionality. While it would be impossible to keep up with every update or product that’s made available, it is worthwhile to conduct an occasional appraisal of your existing systems -- and your current challenges -- to see if a boost, replacement or new investment makes sense. 

To help with your once-over of your equipment, systems and challenges, here are five core wireless communication solutions to keep in mind that you may need to deploy, upgrade or replace. (Bonus: Check out our latest video, below, to find out how Chicago Communications helps companies and agencies meet their comprehensive communications needs.)

As campus security concerns have changed over time across the country, so, too, has the response from education safety officials, including an increased reliance on school resource officers and police. As the number of officers in schools continues to rise, experts on both sides of the issue are still debating whether the increased police presence is improving campus security.

For now, there’s a lack of strong data one way or the other, and most people in the education safety industry will admit that they just don’t know for sure. What they do know is that the number of officers is up: According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the share of schools with a school resource officer increased from 1 percent in 1975 to 40 percent in 2007. As of 2014, there were 31,000 school resource officers employed in public schools nationwide.

More research is under way about the effectiveness of having resource officers and police on campuses. Proponents say the officers protect students, act as mentors, parental figures and psychologists, and improve community relations with police.

If you need to know how to install a mobile radio for an upcoming installation  – or struggling with an installation in progress – we've made a video you won't want to miss. In our latest video offering, one of Chicago Communications' expert technicians shows how to install a mobile radio, step by step.

This video joins two other recent installments, including a whiteboard video on how two-way radios work and a video on two-way radio repair. One of our main goals with these videos is to demystify products or processes that are vital to keeping everyone at your department, business or campus in constant contact. The more you understand about how your technology works, the easier it is for you to use, maintain and keep it in great shape.

Lean manufacturing and its focus on creating customer value, eliminating waste and increasing efficiency has proven so powerful over time that it’s been applied across everything from education to healthcare to software development. Lean manufacturing has important applications in choosing and maintaining communications equipment and solutions.

Lean Manufacturing is Derived from the Toyota Production System (TPS)

To understand lean manufacturing, what it means for communications and how communications can help drive efficiency, let’s start by taking a quick trip back in time to the turn of the 20^th century at Toyota headquarters in Japan, where many of the principles of lean manufacturing were born. Toyota is known for using the method and philosophies of lean manufacturing to transform itself from a small loom-making company to the world’s largest automaker.

In the 1920s, Toyota was a manufacturer of automatic looms, including a novel weaving machine that automatically stopped production when it encountered a problem. That focus on not wasting time and material is the seed of what became the Toyota Production System (TPS), which is what lean manufacturing is derived from.

For companies looking to build their capacity for social media, customer service may be the best place to start in developing a strategy for social media success.

The answer to the question "what is good customer service?" used to involve very little technology: hiring people with people skills and having the policies to let them make customers happy were the keys to success and could allow a business to outperform the competition. 

But now, customers – in particular, Generation Y customers – are pushing companies to figure out how to win business by keeping people happy in the social media realm, especially given the potential for negative reviews to damage a business's reputation. As many as 60% of customers having a negatively perceived interaction with a company say they're likely to share their displeasure via social media, according to research by Millward Brown Digital. 

As a surveillance tool, the 360 degree video camera is hard to beat for its sweeping coverage of nearly every angle of a wide area, and now the technology is poised to take other spheres by storm, from consumer electronics to social media.

Axis network cameras are some of the most impressive on the surveillance camera market, offering 360 degree views when mounted on a ceiling and panoramic coverage when placed on a wall. The Axis cameras will connect to any IP network, including the internet, and allow for remote, real-time viewing and recording from anywhere. For enhanced surveillance, those features and others – including motion and audio detection – make Axis the gold standard for everything from retail settings to schools.

Monitoring your mobile workforce wherever their work takes them – whether outdoors or indoors – just got easier thanks to TruFleet’s new compatibility with iBeacon Bluetooth technology. The TruFleet tracking system, used across industries for its ability to track MotoTRBO radios on the go, now offers seamless integration between iBeacon and GPS to locate workers as they move between vehicles and environments.

With TruFleet, workers’ location within 30-foot accuracy can be viewed in real time via a web browser on desktop computers, tablets or mobile phones. Dispatchers can “ping” radios to get an immediate update on their position, and text and status messages can be sent back and forth between dispatchers and radios for easy exchanges of information about traffic or appointment changes.

As your business, campus or organization grows, the solution can be tailored to meet your needs with easy scalability. As with any application, professional installation is your best bet, and you can expect your installation and deployment to take just a few hours.

Let’s take a look at TruFleet’s enhanced versatility:

If you're purchasing a new facility and about to do a building condition assessment, you're probably expecting that assessment to cover the facility’s structural and maintenance bases, but what about communications readiness? To make sure your assessment is painting as comprehensive a picture as possible, and to position you to meet your needs now and into the future, there are some key communications considerations to keep in mind.

Your users will be expecting instant and reliable connectivity from day one, whether they’re relying on wireless communications, cell phones or two-way radios. As you’re considering a property for your business, you’ll need a realistic assessment of whether it’ll support your communications needs or will require some help in the form of bi-directional amplifiers or other enhancements.

Here are some questions to keep in mind as you’re carrying out your assessment:

Members of the public rely on emergency assistance in some of the most challenging situations - and officers rely on their emergency vehicle equipment to be able to respond quickly and safely. Whether your department is outfitting or updating an emergency vehicle, some equipment features are essential.

Emergency vehicles are some of the most versatile and hardest-working modes of transportation on the road. They need to be high-tech, high visibility, and able to safely transport officers, prisoners and canines.

As you’re thinking about what emergency communications equipment and capabilities you need, be sure to build in the time and resources for professional installation as the best way to ensure that everything is handled appropriately. After all, your vehicles – and everyone’s safety – depend on it. Products may promise easy installation, but having a trained installer on hand means you can focus on job number one.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the most essential features for emergency vehicle equipment.

As emergency communications equipment has lagged behind consumer technology, everyone from global governments to telecom companies and cell phone manufacturers has been collaborating to bridge the gap, particularly when it comes to pinpointing emergency callers’ locations. In the UK, a new technology known as Advanced Mobile Location, or AML, is showing promise as a public safety game changer.

AML is the product of a collaboration between British Telecom, the European Emergency Number Association and handset maker HTC. In a case study of the project, officials said the new solution immediately improved location accuracy levels “by over 4,000 times” vs. the legacy systems.

No major capital investment from any of the stakeholders was required to launch AML, and its low cost and effectiveness give it the potential to join all the essentials that local governments need in their public safety budgets.