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PTT over Cellular (POC)

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SAFFA

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Hi guys.

I was wondering if the two way radio market in your region is being affected by POC. I see allot of companies are now running these radios over the Gsm networks.

Do you think it will have an effect on trunking systems etc.

It's mainly Chinese brands that are making these radios, but I see Icom are also in the market.

Interested to hear your thoughts.
 

mmckenna

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Sort of.

Here in the USA, NexTel, a popular cellular like PTT service was pretty popular for a while. Sprint (another cellular carrier) bought them many years ago and sort of killed off the NexTel brand.
Most cell carriers offer some sort of PTT over cellular service, but it doesn't seem to be as popular around here at NexTel used to be.
There are many apps for smart phones that will mimmic PTT over cellular or WiFi service.

There are even some companies that sell devices that look like a traditional 2 way radio, however work over the cellular networks.

Some higher tier two way radios are including things like WiFi and LTE. Most of that is aimed at data, but there are some that are allowing voice to transit those networks when out of range of the LMR system.


As for impact on trunked systems…

Yeah, a lot of small radio shops went broke. A lot of them were bought up by larger shops.
Two way radio service is still actively used, even leased services like smaller companies use.

I run a trunked system for work, and there were a lot of people trying to tell me the system would go unused when "everyone" switched to cell phones.
True, while cell phones are more popular and wide spread, there is still a need for radio service.
I ran a Motorola trunked system up until 2011. Had about 300 radios on that system. When I replaced it in 2011 with a NexEdge system, I kept those 300 users and over the last few years added over 100 more.
Part of the increase is because the users radios are cheaper, so that gets more radios in the hands of those that need them.
The other part is that enough major disasters have shown that the cellular networks are not robust enough to survive much. Either the systems get destroyed, or completely overloaded.
Looking that the cell sites that serve my location, how they are powered and how they are connected back to their respective networks, I'd never rely on a cell phone as my only form of communications. I've seen too much stuff to do that.
 

Project25_MASTR

Millennial Graying OBT Guy
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There are a couple of issues that are immediate in the area for me. First, anti-cellphone use while driving. Second, areas our airtime services cover are areas without reliable cellular coverage. On Connect Plus, I currently have around 250 subscribers. On Capacity Plus (all individual sites), around 1050 subscribers. Also have a Type I System still running with 40 subscribers on it. For the price of expanding the Connect Plus System out further, we are thinking about building a larger system alongside the existing systems using P25 since over 1,000 if the current customers have first gen Mototrbo Radios and would have to upgrade regardless of the new system we go with…P25 is just becoming the best option as a sole airtime carrier that isn’t attached to a dealer.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

SAFFA

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I've also got a nexedge type C trunking network. In the last 6 months I have lost 3 clients to POC network here (Welcome to iTALKPTT Worldwide Communications).

Unfortunatley we can't compete at all with this as the pricing for a radio with GPS, NFC, Wi-Fi and IP65 is USD90 and the monthly airtime is USD10, which includes login to webbrowser tracking software with history replay, live tracking, geofence and reporting. for a extra USD9 a radio per month, you can get the guard track feature which uses the radio built in NFC with tag points.

I see Diga-talk in the US, which have a nexedge trunk system are now also offering POC (Diga-talk plus) which I find quite interesting.

We have to much invested in our nexedge trunk system to throw in the towl now, will have to ride it out and see what happens.
 

TampaTyron

Beep Boop, Beep Boop
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MCORE,
Before deploying a P25 system, you may want to consider a Capacity Max system. I have been working on several such systems lately and it is light-years ahead of connect plus. The only issues I am seeing with CapMax are that the licensing costs are steep vs regular MOTOTRBO. TT
 

Project25_MASTR

Millennial Graying OBT Guy
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MCORE,
Before deploying a P25 system, you may want to consider a Capacity Max system. I have been working on several such systems lately and it is light-years ahead of connect plus. The only issues I am seeing with CapMax are that the licensing costs are steep vs regular MOTOTRBO. TT

It's already been considered. Like I previously stated, more than 1000 of the existing subscribers do not have Gen 2 radios so they'd have to upgrade to at least Gen 2 or Tier III regardless. One of the downsides to DMR is the fact all of site information has to be known by the subscribers. So if you add a new site, subscribers can't utilize it until they are reprogrammed. If you add channels to a site, you will get errors with subscribers when the controller attempts to assign that channel but subs have no definition of that channel. With Connect Plus, you can update the frequency file over the air. I'm sure you can do that with Capacity Max but it isn't part of the DMR Tier III standard and therefore is going to be vendor proprietary so if you have a system running to true Tier III compliance, you create headaches by adding channels.

P25 on the other hand, hands out the important stuff over the control channel. Things like band plan, channel number (which is calculated off the band plan), NAC, adjacent channel (and active control channel) are all handed out over the air. The radios can adapt to changes and learn new sites as needed. Also, you can enable spectrum wide scanning on the subscribers and at that point, they don't even need a valid control channel programmed into them...they will go and scan for an active control channel with matching SID and WACN, attempt to register and if allowed will gather all of the needed info to either utilize that site or roam to the next.

One of the biggest factors though was what we get XRC's for from Motorola, we can get Atlas controllers from EFJ and what we get MTR3000's for from Motorola (with appropriate EID's) is within a few hundred dollars of what we can get Eclispe 2's for from RF Technology (Phase 2 ready) to interface to those Atlas controllers. In the long run it is less expensive to go with P25 in our use case compared to attempting a Capacity Max migration, especially because we can utilize a true standard and allow multiple vendors and it's less leg work when many of the sites are 3-4 hours one way for the technicians servicing them.
 

TampaTyron

Beep Boop, Beep Boop
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Wow! Thank you for the write up. I remember our conversation regarding CapMax now that you mention it. You guys have really thought it through. I have a hard time wrapping my brain around P25 being less expensive than MOTOTRBO...................... Thank you, TT
 
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