Carbon County is continuing to work on changing over emergency response radios from analog to digital.

On Thursday, the commissioners approved two motions regarding the upcoming changeover.

One proposal was from Motorola Solutions Inc. of Chicago, Illinois for master site licenses, dispatch consoles equipment and spare equipment in the amount of $1,660,000 to be covered by the Statewide Interconnectivity Grant.

The other proposal was from Green’s Communications of Pottsville to furnish and install software to reconfigure the existing Eventide NexLog 740DX recorder to provide a shared recording solution. The cost is $262,000.

This is the second round of updates the county recently approved.

Earlier this month, the commissioners approved $2,006,167.06 from the Statewide Interconnectivity Grant funds for four items at the 911 Communications Center.

They included:

• $24,787: ILEC Post Migration 911 services reimbursement associated with the 911 call delivery.

• $20,833 for NG911 GIS Post Migration, which supports personnel, professional services, training, hardware, software and licensing costs associated with maintaining and uploading the required NG911 GIS date to GeoCOMM GIS Data Hub.

• $1,922,000: The Carbon/Schuylkill New Shared Radio public safety answering points, which will utilize land mobile radio systems to notify, dispatch and communicate with responders during emergencies.

• $38,547.06: NECORE ESInet maintenance of the public safety answering points that utilize an Emergency Services IP Network system to provide a reliable network infrastructure for 911 calls and services.

The purpose of changing over to digital is to help provide better communication between responders across county lines because right now, it can be difficult when responding to other counties because of different frequencies.

Carbon and Schuylkill officials approved a memorandum of understanding for a regional communication, dispatch and recording network in April.

At that time, the estimated the costs for the updated system to be $5,324,500, and including work on five tower sites, seven dispatch consoles and a regional eventide logging recorder.

In July, the county applied for just under $1 million from the Commonwealth Finance Authority for a Monroe County Local Share Account grant. The money if approved without any changes, would be for the purchase of 92 portable radios for local police, as well as county adult and juvenile probation offices and the sheriff’s department.