Contra Costa County Upgrades Public Safety Network Using Communications Solutions from Harris Corporation

Contra Costa County Upgrades Public Safety Network Using Communications Solutions from Harris Corporation

Combination of Constellation(R) Digital Microwave Radios and Intraplex SynchroCast(R) Digital Multiplexers Provides Full-Service Solution to Northern California Public Safety Department

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., April 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS), a leading global provider of wireless equipment and services, today announced that Contra Costa County, California, has upgraded its public safety network with Constellation(R) point-to-point microwave digital wireless radios from Harris Microwave Communications Division, and Intraplex SynchroCast(R) digital multiplexers from Harris Broadcast Communications Division. Additionally, Contra Costa County utilizes Harris' NetBoss(R) network management platform to effectively manage and maintain the County's full array of microwave, networking and broadcast products. The upgrade allows Contra Costa County to switch to a higher-capacity infrastructure with superior management capabilities, thus enabling public safety officials to more effectively link dispatch centers to provide citizens with emergency relief and protection services.

Harris' Constellation radios and Intraplex SynchroCast multiplexers combine to create a fully managed infrastructure capable of simultaneously delivering voice and data services. The installation of new Constellation radios effectively quadruples the County's existing network capacity from 45 Mbps to 180 Mbps, allowing for an unfettered flow of critical communications among police, fire and public safety personnel. The Constellation radio provides an integrated expansion port that enabled the upgrade to occur without disruption to the public safety network, thus ensuring continuity of these critical services. The expansion port allowed the new 3DS3 radios to be installed and tested in parallel with the existing DS3 system on a single antenna system. This arrangement provides both maximum coverage and loop redundancy, ensuring reliability of transmission between agencies in the event of an interruption or outage.

"Each of our microwave and networking products is designed from the ground up to seamlessly work together," said Jayne Leighton, North America vice president of sales and services for Harris Corporation's Microwave Communications Division. "In a sector where split-second decisions can mean life or death, Harris' microwave and networking products ensure rapid and reliable delivery of mission-critical information to those who need it most."

Integrated alongside the Constellation radios are Harris' Intraplex SynchroCast digital multiplexers and timing modules. The Intraplex SynchroCast system helps reduce transmission costs by combining voice and data streams on a single channel, while ensuring greater coverage areas by simulcasting with multiple overlapping transmitters operating on the same frequency. The Intraplex SynchroCast multiplexers use GPS timing to ensure reliable audio reception by automatically adjusting delays and "locking" together signals from multiple transmitters.

With Harris' NetBoss network management platform, Contra Costa County's technicians can constantly monitor the status of the overall network and its individual components, regardless of vendor or protocol, and pinpoint even the most minor faults in the system with precise accuracy through a graphical display, dramatically reducing the need for site visits and costly on-site equipment troubleshooting.

Situated just north of Oakland and east of the San Francisco Bay, Contra Costa County encompasses an area of over 700 square miles and a population of nearly one million residents. Since the installation was completed in October 2004, Constellation's increased capacity has reduced the County's potential for bandwidth bottlenecks within its network, and provided greater opportunities to deploy enhanced services.

About Constellation(R)

Harris Constellation microwave radios are the ideal solution for wireless carrier and private network operators. Designed for high-performance and low- cost networking applications, the point-to-point digital radio's scalable low- , medium- and high-capacity settings provide reliable transport from 8xDS1 to OC3 and 4xDS3. As a flexible indoor solution, Constellation offers greater scalability and affordability than industry counterparts. Additionally, the Constellation's backward-compatible 4xDS3 interface offers operators increased network planning flexibility, enabling them to perform field upgrades and add another DS3 without adding another radio. Built-in diagnostics and performance management are available.

About Intraplex SynchroCast(R)

Harris SynchroCast multiplexers provide carriers and public safety organizations with functionality that enables continuous communications across wide geographies on the same channel without having to manually change frequencies. Synchrocast technology, originally developed and refined for use in land-mobile radio systems, makes this type of broadcast possible by integrating GPS satellite receivers and precision digital delay. The GPS receiver delivers a precise timing reference to the studio and each transmitter site while the digital delay modules calculate and introduce a precise amount of additional delay. Working in tandem, these enable exact alignment of the transmitted audio signals, resulting in dramatically increased mobile radio coverage.

About NetBoss(R)

The NetBoss network management platform provides carriers, enterprises and public safety organizations with a single-point of control to effectively manage and maintain their full array of microwave, networking and broadcast products. Organizations can constantly monitor the status of the overall network and its individual components, regardless of vendor or protocol. This enables them to pinpoint even the most minor faults in the system with precise accuracy through a graphical display, eliminating the need for expensive site visits and equipment troubleshooting.

About Harris

Harris Microwave Communications Division, one of four divisions within Harris Corporation, is the largest supplier of microwave systems in North America and a leading supplier worldwide. Harris Corporation is an international communications technology company focused on providing assured communications(TM) products, systems and services for government and commercial customers. The company's operating divisions serve markets for government communications, tactical radio, broadcast, and microwave systems. Harris provides systems and service to customers in more than 150 countries. Additional information about Harris Corporation is available at www.harris.com.

Source: Harris Corporation

CONTACT: Tonya Loggains, Microwave Communications Division of Harris Corporation, 919-767-3278, or tonya.loggains@harris.com; or Jay Nichols of Sterling Communications, Inc., 415-749-6550, or jnichols@sterlingpr.com

Web site: http://www.harris.com/

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