APCO-16
or Project 16, a police radio system used throughout the United States
In telecommunications, APCO-16, (sometimes APCO Project 16 or Project 16) is a US standard for the characteristics and capabilities of public safety trunked radio systems.
The standard development effort was started in the 1970s by the APCO, a trade association of mostly police and fire service providers. The program was funded by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), a part of the US Department of Justice.
Details
APCO-16 describes such characteristics and capabilities as:
channel access times
automated priority recognition
data systems interface
individuality of system users
command and control flexibility
system growth capability
frequency use
reliability
With the Federal Communications Commission's pending release of the first 800 MHz band licenses, the LEAA funded a project to develop required capabilities and standards needed in trunked public safety two-way radio systems. The report defined proposed methods for frequency reuse, coordination, and interference reduction. The standards also gained acceptance in businesses such as Specialized Mobile Radio, utility communications systems, and refineries.
The study concluded that those frequencies would be suitable for Public Safety mobile radio uses. The study recognized that certain technical problems like "picket fencing", foliage interference and abrupt signal fall out posed some minor problems, also addressed concerns about health effects from 800 MHz transmitters but did not reveal definitive findings. The availability of the significant additional spectrum and the long term possibility of the eventual collocation of nearly all Public Safety communications into one segment of the spectrum far outweighed these problems.
While the program succeeded in creating basic performance standards and feature sets, it failed to create a signaling standard.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4653253. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “APCO-16” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.