Gov. Hutchinson requests $10 million for wireless network

Gov. Asa Hutchinson is requesting the Legislature to release $10 million from his “rainy day fund” to upgrade the state’s Arkansas Wireless Information Network (AWIN).

The network gives law enforcement, firefighters, first responders and other emergency personnel the ability to coordinate communications. It averaged almost 242,000 calls a day in 2015, according to a press release from Hutchinson’s office. Almost 30,000 radios are authorized to use the system.

The money would replace aging radio equipment at 20 AWIN sites, replace console equipment at nine dispatch locations, and pay for upgrading the system’s operating software. The upgrades will make AWIN current with available technology and able to take advantage of future technologies. The next generation emergency communication system is expected to launch in the next five to seven years.

It will double the number of channels available to public safety personnel and will make it easier to coordinate communications across many responders and multiple jurisdictions in a major disaster. The new system will allow dispatchers to manage multiple calls at once and give each AWIN site the capability to both transmit and receive communications.

The upgrade would begin around April 1 if approved by the Legislature and would take about one year to complete.

In a press release, Hutchinson said, “AWIN has proven invaluable during the aftermath of disasters such as the Vilonia tornadoes and the flash flood tragedy at the Albert Pike Recreational Area by giving law enforcement, fire, rescue and medical teams the ability to communicate when local services had been wiped out and cell phones would not work.”