Palmetto 800 Rebanding Information

South Carolina has begun its rebanding of the 800 MHz spectrum as mandated by the FCC. The rebanding (the replacing the operating frequencies in your radio) will be done at no cost to your agency and should be seamless to your radio once it is reprogrammed with the new frequencies. The rebanding project is expected to be completed by December 31, 2012.

The project has been broken into two parts;

• Part 1 – Rebanding of the subscriber radios (mobiles, portables, consoles and desk top control stations). This part of the project should be completed no later than March 31, 2012. Radios that have not been rebanded by this date may cease to function until they have been rebanded.

Back to back repeater system – During the rebanding project it may be confusing as to know which conventional PATCON (PAlmetto Tactical COnventional Network) repeaters are on the new frequencies and which ones are on the old frequencies. To help reduce this confusion we are installing back to back repeaters statewide on the PATCON system. This will allow the conventional repeaters to transmit and receive on the old and new frequencies simultaneously eliminating confusion.

• Part 2 – Beginning no later than April 1, 2012 engineers will begin rebanding the Palmetto 800 system infrastructure to the new assigned frequency band. The Palmetto 800 infrastructure must be rebanded with the new frequencies by December 31, 2012.

You will be contacted about attending a rebanding coordinating meeting in the next couple of months. We would highly encourage that you send a representative from your department to attend this meeting. I you have any question please refer to the contact sheet attached to this web page.

A number of links have been provided below in order to provide you with additional rebanding information:

• Rebanding Kick Off Presentation
• Rebanding Contacts
• Mutual Aid Talkgroups
• Rebanding Funds Allocation Form
• SCRB Form 1 - Radio Template Approval Form
• W9 Form.pdf
• Motorola Rebanding Web Site
• TA Rebanding Web Site

If your agency is using some of the radio models listed below they may not be able to be reprogramed to accept the new band alignment and will be replaced at no cost to your agency.

• Spectra
• Spectra E
• Saber SI
• STX Gemini Plus
• MTX 820
• MaxTrac
• LCS 2000
• LTS 2000
• MTS2000 (256k)
• ASTRO Saber (512k)
• ASTRO Spectra (<96)