John, spend five minutes looking back through the thread and you will see what some of our concerns were.
We had multiple instances where the person on the other end of the phone took a couple of minutes to try and interpret what we were trying to do, even though they had a script in front of them with drop down fields, they still stuffed it up. When you aim to be on the road in four minutes, a delay of two minutes at the station waiting for someone who is on the phone is definitely an issue for my 'Chardonnay' brigade.
We also witnessed delays of up to twenty minutes from the time we spoke to the operator until the time the message was actually sent on the network, possibly not ideal...
My biggest problem was the fact that we were not speaking with Adelaide Fire, and therefore were unable to get any further information about the job. Quite often between the time the initial page is sent, and the couple of minutes later when we ring in to acknowledge more information is available, and our guys routinely ask. It might be just as simple as the operator saying we are getting multiple calls, or we've had a call from the premises and they are telling us it is burnt toast, this can make a difference to the thought process of our 'Chardonnay' officers.
If the system works for your brigade that is excellent, because it means that for brigades like mine that prefer to speak to a real life fire service comcen operator they will have a better chance, because your brigade will be speaking to a Link Paging operator in Jakarta.
What's your next suggestion.....carrier pigeons???
Well if the services insist on removing the ability to be able to speak with Adelaide Fire, I would suggest using one of the buttons on the Alpha OAD and programming it to send an acknowledgment message. But lets hope it doesn't get to that because that too could have its own issues.
