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Prince Edward Island (CA)

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Provincial Integrated Communications System (PICS)

The 30 year contract signed for PICS ends in 2016. The province is currently exploring options for a replacement system. Reports suggest it will be an extension to Nova Scotia's "TMR2".

PICS is a Motorola SmartNet Type I, 800 MHz trunking system that covers all of Prince Edward Island and is a joint project of Bell Aliant and PEI Emergency Measures Organization. The system was planned and implemented in 1986 to promote interoperability among all public safety agencies.

PICS is shared by public service users and by commercial users. Every emergency agency in PEI has at least one PICS radio but not all agencies use PICS as their primary system. The RCMP utilizes its own 400 MHZ repeater system, however dispatch does have access to PICS and patching may be possible. Two of the three municipal police forces in the province (Summerside and Kensington) have full access to PICS but on an everyday basis use their own conventional 800 MHz repeaters. These conventional channels are integrated into PICS radios. Charlottetown Police use their own motoTRBO radio system. Several fire departments use the PICS system as their primary means of communications but most use VHF radios.

PICS is made up of 6 sites, using four groups of frequencies. It is thought that each site regardless of location and traffic volume has 15 frequencies. These have been described as 1 dedicated control channel, 9 simulcast and 6 local voice channels.

There is a fail soft system whereby if trunking fails the system reverts to conventional repeaters and a recurring beep to indicate the failure. Users then revert to preassigned frequencies, as in a community repeater system. I am speculating that the local frequencies mentioned above are the conventional repeaters, but I could be wrong! It does seem odd that the system reverts to conventional repeaters rather than to site trunking. There are also simplex frequencies in the system, identified on radios by numbers only. It is not known if there are only common-use simplex frequencies, or also individual agency frequencies.

Repeater sites are connected by microwave. Sites are often co-located with other Aliant facilities or perhaps other owners' facilities, but generally they have their own tower. One exception is at Caledonia where the repeater is on the Aliant Cell tower.

RCMP

Prince Edward Island is one of eight provinces of Canada in which the RCMP operates as both the provincial and federal police force. In addition it is also the municipal police force in much of the province. The RCMP organization in PEI is designated as L Division, with its own commanding officer and headquartered in Charlottetown. This is the smallest division in Canada, in terms of geography, and also I would guess, in number of personnel. L Division is part of the Atlantic area of the RCMP, which has a regional headquarters in Halifax, Nova Scotia. As in other provinces the field structure of the RCMP below divisional headquarters was in the past to have subdivisions (not necessary in PEI due to its small size) and beneath those individual detachments. Today this is evolving towards a consolidated structure in which detachments are joined in districts or in large detachments. The individual former detachment locations may still remain as local offices of the district. In some cases they may still be referred to informally as detachments but do not have the autonomy of the past. L Division was, in the recent past, made up eight detachments, which are now combined into three districts (Western, Central and Eastern)

The hub of the system is the Stratford repeater (across the river from Charlottetown) and a microwave link from there to telecoms at L Division HQ located in Charlottetown. The call sign for telecoms is XJD916. There formerly were 8 detachments but now instead there are three districts. The radios have displays and generally, a name rather than number identifies the channel.

PEI RCMP operate on their own 400MHz radio system. In addition to these frequencies it is possible or likely that they may also utilize the national bank of 420 MHz frequencies allocated to the RCMP and CSIS, for special uses. All of this usage is likely to be encrypted and therefore unavailable to the casual listener.

Municipal Police Forces

There are three independent municipal police forces in the province of Prince Edward Island:

  • Kensington
  • Summerside
  • Charlottetown

Charlottetown have their own motoTRBO system. Summerside and Kensington have their own conventional 800MHz repeater system within the PICS channel plan.

Island EMS (Paramedics)

As of 2006 the five private ambulance organizations in Prince Edward Island have been superceded by Island EMS. The system is comprised of 17 land ambulances, six base locations and approximately 110 employees. Island EMS is owned and operated by Medavie EMS which also operates EMC and ANB.

Radio communications for Island EMS are on the PICS system.

Medavie EMS also owns and operates Medacom Atlantic. Medacom Atlantic provides 911 call-taking services across Prince Edward Island and also provides dispatch for Island EMS, rural volunteer fire departments and Kensington Police. Medacom Atlantic does not dispatch for RCMP, Charlottetown Police/Fire and Summerside Police/Fire.

10 Codes

For a complete list of codes, please visit ScanPEI

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Return to DB page: Province of Prince Edward Island
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