LOWNDESVILLE, S.C. (WSPA) — The Lowndesville Fire Department has found such success using Tango Tango — a service that utilizes cell phone capabilities to streamline emergency communications — that it wants Abbeville County to provide the service to its other emergency departments.

According to Assistant Chief Travis Ashley, the department began using the service in December with a 30-day free trial. However, the staff at Lowndesville Fire Department found Tango Tango so indispensable that leadership signed up for the subscription service for one year, which will cost the department roughly $3,000.

“It just works,” Ashley said. “We have had great success with it.”

Ashley spearheaded the push to expand the use of Tango Tango to other emergency services in the county. This week, Ashley and other department members lobbied the Abbeville County Council to expand purchasing a subscription for other emergency services, an ask totaling $21,800 for the first year of service.

Tango Tango offers several tools useful to firefighters, the first of which is the ability to host up to 250 talk groups while providing high quality, static-free sound. The app is downloaded on department phones.

“I’ve had my pager and my phone side by side,” Ashley said. “The pager, you couldn’t understand what was being said. The phone app you could hear it just as clear.”

In addition to providing higher fidelity audio, the app offers users mapping services, which firefighters say comes in handy in a county as rural as Abbeville.

“We may have someone in a tree stand or we may have a lost person,” Chief John Holley said. “Whatever the case may be, if one of our guys finds them, as long as they’re active on the app, we can highlight their pin and ‘navigate to user’ and walk right where they are or drive right to where they are.”

The department leaders told 7News the company also offers comprehensive and reliable customer service, fixing reported issues within minutes.

According to Holley, Lowndesville FD is one of only two departments in the state currently using Tango Tango.