The TETRA standard is used in radios worldwide. Security researchers have found multiple vulnerabilities in the underlying cryptography and its implementation, including issues that allow for the decryption of traffic.
You should absolutely report it to the FCC. It’s unlikely they even know it’s happening and regardless it’s illegal. Whoever maintains the equipment ought to know better and correct the problem. If it’s broadband interference it’s not likely to be limited just to those you’re using. There’s something very wrong with their system.
Source: I’m an Extra-class licensed amateur operator. I’ve reported improper interference from “official” systems and gotten results quickly using basic logs.
Adding note: I’m not an expert on trunking systems but understand the basics. Unless your business shares the trunking system with the local police (unlikely given the age of your system and that you specifically mention the encrypted / maybe just digital system they’re now using), you shouldn’t be sharing the same set of frequencies. If you were on the same system, you’d have “talk groups”, and if your radio is configured to hear all groups instead of yours, you’d hear their traffic. Our city/county system shares a trunk system among all kinds of city services, using talk groups. I think there’s a business or two that leases space but I can’t remember, so it’s not impossible for a business to lease space on a shared county system. In that case either their radios are misconfigured vis-a-vis proper talk groups or yours is. Maybe both? 😂
We have a similar organisation to the FCC that deals with these matters. I will take this up with our radio specialist first though.
The bit that has me scratching my head is that it is our analogue VHF system that is picking up these communications.
All emergency services are supposed to have moved to digital, encrypted channels and yet I am sitting here listening to the police despatch co-ordinate units to chase an agitated man with a bat as we speak. It’s happening daily, especially early in the morning but it just doesn’t make any sense to me.
Unless some part of their network is still analogue, we shouldn’t be hearing anything.
I do not know enough about the technical side of these technologies to understand this, I just use them regularly.
We have an extensive network of private repeaters set up all over the state on our own land. I just hope it is not us that are somehow causing this problem. We have the requisite licenses for all of our bands and nothing has really changed for us. Trouble only started when they went digital.
It sounds like it’s their system then indeed. But both parties should be prepared to audit their setup once the local radio authority is involved (sorry for the US-centric assumption of FCC).
This might be a dumb question, but have you confirmed it’s the local services? Periodic reception can sometimes be indicative of atmospheric conditions affecting rx/tx.
If it isn’t screwing up your operations and you aren’t leaking on your side, then I probably wouldn’t deal with it either, personally.
Edit: I read your comment thinking you are receiving unencrypted transmissions, but I see now that your comment is ambiguous.
So it’s local and unencrypted, but the local services are encrypted? Strange indeed. I wonder then if something is re-amplifying the signal after it has been received and decrypted - maybe bad wiring at a reception site, or interference with another field.
Digital is noisy af. When we switched from analog to digital at work (same radios, just a software upgrade) they started to interfere with loads of equipment.
It also seems kind of a bad choice for emergency services.
I know when we trialled going digital for fire response at my old company it was an absolute failure.
At least with analogue when there was interference from smoke or terrain, we could mostly get the gist of what had been said.
With digital it seemed to either work or not work, there was no in-between.
It was more akin to transmitting a short audio file or recording than a live communications medium. Not a single one of us thought it was an improvement on our existing system but of course they rolled it out anyway. Can’t fight progress.
For sure, digital dont on do well outside of ideal conditions. There are a few women in the plant who’s voices are above 1/2 of the sample frequency so their calls come across as 100% aliasing after it gets compressed and encoded.
I think digital was chosen for us because they can have dozens of virtual channels on one frequency where as on analog they were paying for a licence transmit on several.
You should absolutely report it to the FCC. It’s unlikely they even know it’s happening and regardless it’s illegal. Whoever maintains the equipment ought to know better and correct the problem. If it’s broadband interference it’s not likely to be limited just to those you’re using. There’s something very wrong with their system.
Source: I’m an Extra-class licensed amateur operator. I’ve reported improper interference from “official” systems and gotten results quickly using basic logs.
Adding note: I’m not an expert on trunking systems but understand the basics. Unless your business shares the trunking system with the local police (unlikely given the age of your system and that you specifically mention the encrypted / maybe just digital system they’re now using), you shouldn’t be sharing the same set of frequencies. If you were on the same system, you’d have “talk groups”, and if your radio is configured to hear all groups instead of yours, you’d hear their traffic. Our city/county system shares a trunk system among all kinds of city services, using talk groups. I think there’s a business or two that leases space but I can’t remember, so it’s not impossible for a business to lease space on a shared county system. In that case either their radios are misconfigured vis-a-vis proper talk groups or yours is. Maybe both? 😂
We have a similar organisation to the FCC that deals with these matters. I will take this up with our radio specialist first though.
The bit that has me scratching my head is that it is our analogue VHF system that is picking up these communications.
All emergency services are supposed to have moved to digital, encrypted channels and yet I am sitting here listening to the police despatch co-ordinate units to chase an agitated man with a bat as we speak. It’s happening daily, especially early in the morning but it just doesn’t make any sense to me.
Unless some part of their network is still analogue, we shouldn’t be hearing anything.
I do not know enough about the technical side of these technologies to understand this, I just use them regularly.
We have an extensive network of private repeaters set up all over the state on our own land. I just hope it is not us that are somehow causing this problem. We have the requisite licenses for all of our bands and nothing has really changed for us. Trouble only started when they went digital.
It sounds like it’s their system then indeed. But both parties should be prepared to audit their setup once the local radio authority is involved (sorry for the US-centric assumption of FCC).
This might be a dumb question, but have you confirmed it’s the local services? Periodic reception can sometimes be indicative of atmospheric conditions affecting rx/tx.
If it isn’t screwing up your operations and you aren’t leaking on your side, then I probably wouldn’t deal with it either, personally.
Edit: I read your comment thinking you are receiving unencrypted transmissions, but I see now that your comment is ambiguous.
Yeah it’s local. They name local streets and towns.
So it’s local and unencrypted, but the local services are encrypted? Strange indeed. I wonder then if something is re-amplifying the signal after it has been received and decrypted - maybe bad wiring at a reception site, or interference with another field.
Digital is noisy af. When we switched from analog to digital at work (same radios, just a software upgrade) they started to interfere with loads of equipment.
It also seems kind of a bad choice for emergency services.
I know when we trialled going digital for fire response at my old company it was an absolute failure.
At least with analogue when there was interference from smoke or terrain, we could mostly get the gist of what had been said.
With digital it seemed to either work or not work, there was no in-between.
It was more akin to transmitting a short audio file or recording than a live communications medium. Not a single one of us thought it was an improvement on our existing system but of course they rolled it out anyway. Can’t fight progress.
For sure, digital dont on do well outside of ideal conditions. There are a few women in the plant who’s voices are above 1/2 of the sample frequency so their calls come across as 100% aliasing after it gets compressed and encoded.
I think digital was chosen for us because they can have dozens of virtual channels on one frequency where as on analog they were paying for a licence transmit on several.
/edit: a typo