Oakland police radio interference from AT&T 2G (850MHz) cell towers?
Oakland city officials and AT&T representatives have identified and are working to resolve a problem with an $18 million public safety radio system launched in 2011 that FAILED during a protest when President Barack Obama was in town last month. Today, city officials said that the poor reception, unclear audio, and speaker problems stem from interference from AT&T cell phone towers, and antennas on 16 towers have been temporarily disabled while the problem is addressed. 
According to mercurynews.com:
“AT&T is working closely with the city of Oakland to understand if the issues they’ve raised are connected in any way to AT&T’s network,” said AT&T spokesman John Britton.
AT&T has temporarily suspended the 2G (850MHz) network on the affected sites, but is still operating the more powerful 2G (1900 MHz) network on another frequency. No changes have been made to the 3G or 4G networks, Britton said.
“We haven’t seen a customer impact,” he said. “(The network that is shut down) is the oldest technology out there. The majority of our customers have switched 3G or 4G.”
The action to FIX the problems comes less than a week after the Federal Communications Commission began a probe into the problems (Hey! It IS a public safety network, after all! 😉 ). City and AT&T engineering teams determined that one cell site in particular, at East Ninth Street, has been “causing significant interference” to the city’s radio system.
After President Obama’s fundraiser at the Fox Theater in downtown Oakland on July 23, police officers lost communication with dispatchers for about 30 minutes while approximately 100 protestors (you and I BOTH know how officials estimate protestors! ) marched downtown. The problems, which were caused by a broken cooling system in an antenna installation did not affect the department’s ability to police President Obama’s visit or the protests, police said. 😉 Police say that the new system has been unreliable from the start.
Deanna Santana, City Administrator, has acknowledged persistent radio problems, but said that Oakland is not yet prepared to dump the system for a regional system, using the same technology, 😉 that will come online in September. The regional system includes 40 agencies in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
-Bill at
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