Hi everyone,

I am located in central Auckland, and many years ago I used to enjoy listening to Auckland Police radio. Unfortunately for me, many years ago the police moved from analogue to Encrypted Digital P25 here in Auckland (as well as Wellington & Christchurch), making it now impossible to listen in to local events. 

But.... fortunately for me, both Whangarei and Hamilton districts are still using analogue radio, and I can still enjoy listening into both those from my home location, in Auckland.

Yesterday afternoon, the Whangarei channels stopped working (at least in the northern Auckland area), and I became suspicious that they might have been turned off due to a move to P25 Encrypted Digital.

I searched the Internet to see if there was any information, but I was unable to find out anything regarding the timeline for other districts going digital, or the cause of yesterdays outage. All I could glean was that work is currently in progress in upgrading the whole emergency communications network, including fire and ambulance, but no definite dates etc.

Fortunately, for me, the Whangerai analogue channels are working once again... but for how long?

So, my questions are...

1 Does anyone know when the Hamilton and Whangarei districts will retire their respective old analogue radio networks?

2 Regarding yesterdays outage, which lasted several hours, was that a technical fault, or was it in some way connected with a forthcoming switch off of the analogue network?

All, and any information gratefully received.