I cant help but wonder how much of these "problems" are being incorrectly labeled or identified and are nothing more than poor digital voice quality. It seems like many county & local agencies that are on digital voice are not accepting the quality of service provided by their digital voice systems versus their old analog gear.
Many of the department employees using higher-tech radios (beyond 2 simplex and 1 repeater channel) may be lumping all different kinds of problems into one or two categories. Naturally, the bottom line is they cant communicate.
Each time I spend a couple hours or more monitoring, I hear at least one station request they carry on a conversation via a cell phone, not due to privacy but due to poor reception. I also hear that same "poor quality" on my cheap radio (HP1 & 396XT) in the form of garbled, echo'ed and dropped audio.
I guess I have a bad attitude when it comes to the digital communications solutions that are being sold to public service departments with all the promises in the world. I am far from an expert with all of the various new technology but have a firm understanding of digital voice and the bandwidth required to properly communicate. It seems like many digital systems being deployed are coming up short on the promises that were originally made pre-sale.
If vendors can't get digital voice implemented properly, all the extra features and interop functionality don't mean a hill o beans and they should go back to basics, then incrementally grow from there.
If for some reason I happen to disappear, I would imagine a sales executive from Motorola or Harris has taken a contract out on my _ _ _ .
Please move this post if it should be somewhere else....Sorry, I did not intend to hijack from the O.P.
Vince