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Thursday, 15 November 2012 15:49

Issues With New Pagers

Member dissatisfaction and technical issues with CFA’s new pagers left the VFBV/CFA Communications and Technology Committee plenty to work through, as the trial ended a few days ago.

CFA plans firmware upgrades to fix some usability issues before the Unication Alpha Legend pagers are rolled out between February and June 2013. In the meantime, VFBV has requested information on the status of the contract and the content of the upgrades.

 

With 2,000 pagers tested in 19 Districts, reported problems included;

  • The need to scroll to the end of the message to stop it beeping
  • Message capacity in individual folders can’t be changed by the user
  • Confusing instructions and screen icons for personalising the pager
  • The alert circuit message displays an uninformative incident number on the minimised folder screen
  • Pagers are easy to dislodge from holster
  • The time must be set manually
  • Pagers arrived without feedback forms

CFA is also working on a means of naming/identifying individual pagers. 

The Alpha Legend pager was selected by ESTA for its overall performance, including; sensitivity matching or better than the current model, programmable over the air, durability, multiple alerting mechanisms/tones, battery life, screen lighting/display and multiple message type folders.

VFBV is receiving strong feedback from members involved with the trial – some saying they will not accept the new pager, considering it a backward step.

VFBV informed CFA of this likely concern at the start of the trial some months ago and is still actively pursuing CFA for a solution.

Read 15251 times Last modified on Tuesday, 12 March 2013 09:54
CFA Volunteers are the unpaid professionals of our Emergency Services. VFBV is their united voice, and speaks on behalf of Victoria's 60,000 CFA Volunteers.

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