The City of Plano installed approximately 250 mobile vehicle routers in all first responder vehicles for Fire, Police and Animal Services during late 2019 and early 2020. This was done in order to provide mobile connectivity that is more resilient to outages and consolidate LTE expenses.
It is critical that the City keeps maintenance on these routers so the latest security updates and upgrades are made available to our first responders. These routers provide these personnel with real-time access to mapping and computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems. Maintenance on the routers also includes hardware support should devices have issues and includes advanced replacement services. Although we maintain a few spares for emergencies, the advanced replacement service ensures that we obtain a replacement device within two days instead of waiting weeks to get a unit back from repair.
If this maintenance is not awarded, we leave our public safety vehicles exposed to possible security threats and the possibility that some emergency vehicles will be out of service longer than necessary. The mobile routers have proven to increase reliability of their connectivity and have enabled us to push more data to our first responders enabling more advanced features than they had access to before.
Purchasing requested quotes for annual maintenance from other vendors and CDW-G was the lowest of the quotes received.
The City is authorized to purchase from a cooperative purchasing program with another local government or a local cooperative organization pursuant to Chapter 271 Subchapter F of the Texas Local Government Code and by doing so satisfies any State Law requiring local governments to seek competitive bids for items. (NIPA Contract No. 2018011-01 / City of Plano Internal Contract No. 2020-0725-OR)