D-Star
While the naysayers insist that D-Star is proprietary to Icom the fact is D-Star is an open standard. What is proprietary is the AMBE CODEC and it belongs to DVSI.
The DV Dongle is a D-Star device you plug into your computers USB port and allows you to use your PC with a microphone to talk on D-Star via the gateway and come out on any D-Star repeater.
There is a repeater in England that uses an analog repeater attached to a D-Star encoder decoder made by a Japanese Professor. This is now up on the D-Star gateway.
Currently there are 500 D-Star repeaters in the US. 1 1/2 years ago there were 150. Here in Michigan there are about 18 D-Star repeaters with another 10 licensed and waiting to be installed.
In Medical district 1 there are 9 counties and they are all licensed and currently have 2 D-Star repeaters each. Some just don't have them on-line yet.
It's not for everyone and it won't replace analog anytime soon but it sure is growing at a healthy rate.
Les
W8MSP
W8LIV nodes B and C
D-Star is proprietary to Icom. In the business world it takes an awful lot of money and genius to allow another manufacturer to utilize another manufacturers formula, patent or brand name. In some areas of the country D-Star is not very much in use. I don't have any and probably wouldn't get any equipment unless there is widespread use of it.