Thanks for your reply. I am my employer's "radio person" and we use Motorola's for which I have the software in my desktop. A contractor who does work at our location on a regular basis noticing the efficiency of portables at our location then requested radios from their management for themselves to use at the various locations they work at including ours. It is because their foreman would like to be able to "talk" to us in house to co-ordinate with their Kenwood's is why I am trying to help ,but, I am not familiar with the nuances of Kenwood software. I am now wondering which PROTALK models that I was looking at. They have the TK3402-U16P which according to a website that sells these are not only user and dealer programmable, but, will also work with repeaters. The regular PROTALK with it's pre-programmed frequency chart does not appear to have this capability unless I am missing something. I am guessing that the PROTALK on the front of the radio in this case is referring to the series rather than the specific model, meaning that I could program one of our repeater pairs into their radios for site work. Can I bug you ( or anyone else) one more time?
The "ProTalk" radios are sold with a predetermined set of frequencies that they have access to. You choose which pre-programmed frequencies you want to access. The frequencies are all itinerant, color dot, etc.
There is no option to program in your own frequencies on these radios.
This is a marketing thing. Basically making it so a small company can get licensed on a few itinerants and not have to worry about the complexities and costs of having to program radios. Basically/almost "ready to run" right out of the box.
There are a few different "ProTalk" models. If I had the time to research it, I'd probably have told you the same thing ohiohonda did.
To make the contractors radios work with your system would require beating new firmware into their radios. That would let -YOU- program in your frequencies, however that would make it so their radios would never be able to be programmed on the fly for their own use. They'd forever need to have the software and cable to make any changes.
The correct path is to either loan them one of your radios, or have their company order them the right type.