I think it's mostly the continuation of the push towards digital revolving around narrowbanding. Specifically, unscrupulous or disingenuous salesmen and radio vendors who feed these various outfits a load of BS along the lines of "Narrowbanding means you must go digital!!!", then present them with pretty hi-gloss sales literature for TRBO and NXDN. Of course, shame on those outfits for not doing their due diligence also, and finding out what narrowbanding really means.
That being said, there are some cases where I do think it makes sense for certain outfits to go digital. TRBO in particular can be a very good choice for organizations that are not mission-critical and can make good use of an additional "channel" without having to license an additional frequency (thanks to TDMA). I'm just not a fan of TRBO being used for mission-critical public safety, especially when "mobile in a box" repeaters are used instead of continuous duty MTR3000's. The TRBO subscriber units are simply not built as well as Motorola's true public safety grade equipment is, regardless of what certain TRBO fanboys will try to convince you of. If you give the APX series TRBO capability, coupled with rock solid MTR3000 repeaters (or even better, the GTR 8000 series), then I would soften my stance somewhat on TRBO usage for public safety.
I've got a Morgan O'Brien story for another time. But a while ago, I went to a Nextel road show out in the Midwest when they were trying to market it as THE interoperability platform. I guess it was 2003 or so. They had the multimedia presentations, smoke machines, and laser beams with cute coffee achievers in business attire to escort the chiefs and "us people" around, Some dope in the crowd (guess who) spoke up and said something like, "Yeah, you guys have something that could be helpful and make another tool in the toolbox. But why are you pushing the telephone aspect? Have Motorola make another waveform for the XTS5000 and have an iDEN in it emulating a talkgroup and private call instead of those crappy-sounding imitation cellphones. Make it a supplemental system that augments a dispatch system and can scan back to dispatch, simplex, and mutual aid channels, The last thing you need when you're in a fire is your wife calling you to tell you to stop in and pick up an Italian bread on the way home. That's impractical. Make it be capable of being a part of an overall radio system, then I'd buy into this idea." You'd have thought it was a f@rt in church.
A short time later, and doubtfully because of that, a 902-928 MHz proprietary spread spectrum off-network feature was added. Lame-o talkaround that could be turned off by a form of OTAP if you discontinued service (you don't want those things around if they're not paying their radio bill).
Turbo not so much, but NXDN has really good utility in places that are in a bind for spectrum. You can wedge a 4K00 emission in between two UHF channels with (theoretically... I've never proven it outside of the math) no interaction between any of the systems involved. It might also be good for VHF because it's fully contained inside the 7.5 kHz channelspace and you wouldn't have to consider adjacent channels.
Turbo "looks like" (but, of course is different from) P25 Phase II, which the APX series is capable of. If they would have narrowed down Phase I to an NXDN width, it would be much more spectrum efficient and would have allowed new systems to build out in congested areas... but Phase I isn't infrastructure dependent like Phase II is. Can't meet your margin that way!
Nobody in the land mobile radio industry would really tell you that you had to go digital when you narrowbanded, would they? :roll:
