Milestone,

"...but why purchase the program if there were no demand for it?"

Excellant question. From FW's post I see they have deployed one system and participated in one trial exercise in a 2/3 year time period. Maybe that is why the low selling price.

I know in the North East I-95 corridor these things have been in place for quite a while. I have had exposure to metro LA and Chicago communication systems. I have also visited the new NYC emergency ops center (OEM that replaced the one destroyed on 9/11) I cannot speak for the many other areas of the country except what I read/know from some of the national journals (NFPA, Fire Engineering, and firehouse magazines all available on line BTW) and trade shows (firehouse in Baltimore and FDIC in Indianapolis again all available on line for the exhibitors and their products) I have had national level training opportunities in New Mexico with the feds (bomb related) and also at the Nuclear Test Site in NV (nuc/rad) and the National Fire Academy in MD, all courtesy of those federal dollars I was talking about. The cops operate a much more closed shop than the FD and deal more directly with the feds (FBI etc) for their direction. But the vast majority of 911 comm centers are joint fd/pd emergency ops, sometimes dispatch centers are seperated in very large communities.

If you look into military ops and info management you will find a whole different world of hardware and software. Systems and info integration is the name of the game in battlefield management.

As I said, it is very late in the game.

Good Luck,

(I) C. W.