Are the FRS only 1-14 channels dead in your area?

[Omega-TI]

With the advent of cellphones, many people seem to have abandoned 1/2 duplex radios in favor cell phones which they carry everywhere anyway. Recently I've taken to monitoring entire groups of frequencies carved out for private and/or citizen use. CB, FRS, HAM all seem to be down, even business communications seem to have taken a hit. Now the FRS only frequencies (not GMRS) seems to be quite dead in my area and I was wondering, what's it's like in your area?

Do you think the average consumer has simply determined it's not worth carrying a limited range, non-private separate radio around with them when a cell phone they are already paying for will do the job better?

 

[ecps92]

With the advent of cellphones, many people seem to have abandoned 1/2 duplex radios in favor cell phones which they carry everywhere anyway. Recently I've taken to monitoring entire groups of frequencies carved out for private and/or citizen use. CB, FRS, HAM all seem to be down, even business communications seem to have taken a hit. Now the FRS only frequencies (not GMRS) seems to be quite dead in my area and I was wondering, what's it's like in your area?

Do you think the average consumer has simply determined it's not worth carrying a limited range, non-private separate radio around with them when a cell phone they are already paying for will do the job better?

Still plenty of users in my area on Two Way radios daily, maybe your listening at the wrong time ? Searching too much of a chunk ??

20 min's the other day at a Mall and I had a full page of notes in my logs - FRS, GMRS, Part 90, VHF High, UHF, T-Band, 800/900
Amateur would likely be during the Morning/Evening Rush and then evening NETS

 

[mmckenna]

Like all radio services, depends on where you are, when you are, and how good your antenna is.

Just about everyone 13 or older has a cell phone now. Service contracts cover everything, phone, text, data. No one really pays much attention to how much data they use, how many calls they make, what time the calls are made, how many text messages, etc.
For the average user, cell phones are perfect and meet their needs. Between the phone, text and walkie talkie apps, it's a great solution. Plus, they'll have coverage that FRS, GMRS, MURS, CB or ham users could only dream of. And it's all on one device that doesn't make one look like a total dork.

Sometimes when I'm traveling, I'll have the radio scanning the FRS/GMRS channels. Sometimes it's MURS. Sometimes in Amateur Radio. I've found that in just about every city I've passed through, there's some amount of FRS traffic.

No, it's no like it was back in the 1990's/2000's. But it's still there.

Users have changed. Better options for average Joe or small businesses.

 

[kg4ehv]

Not at all, live close to a highway and there are lots of cars up and down it using FRS. The summer camps are always good for a laugh. But you do get the kids that run the battery down hitting the call button for fun.

 

[Echo4Thirty]

There are quite a few businesses in the Houston area using FRS for their internal comms.

 

[N6JPA]

With the advent of cellphones, many people seem to have abandoned 1/2 duplex radios in favor cell phones which they carry everywhere anyway. Recently I've taken to monitoring entire groups of frequencies carved out for private and/or citizen use. CB, FRS, HAM all seem to be down, even business communications seem to have taken a hit. Now the FRS only frequencies (not GMRS) seems to be quite dead in my area and I was wondering, what's it's like in your area?

Do you think the average consumer has simply determined it's not worth carrying a limited range, non-private separate radio around with them when a cell phone they are already paying for will do the job better?

FRS/GMRS is used regularly in my rural area. Maybe in cities the use is much lower. In my area there is one cell phone tower with poor coverage.

 

[rescuecomm]

In the last 6 months, their has been major work on the nearby highway (2 lane). It began with a 12 inch natural gas pipeline install by a major utility followed by a full re-paving. The traffic control teams mainly used the 2 watt channels daily to coordinate one lane traffic flow. They looked like the higher price Midland FRS units. One of the pipeline crews war using some sort of UHF Motorola commercial handheld. My RS PRO-197 has all GMRS/FRS frequencies in a bank for close by users, while I have a zone in a ham HT for mobile monitoring. On several days, the language was all Spanish.

 

[footage]

Very busy in California. Great listening in English, Chinese, Russian, Italian and Spanish.

 

[nokones]

In the Phoenix Arizona Valley of the Sun Region, all 22 Channels are being used. Channels 1-7 are used by various business, landscapers/construction crews. Channels 15-22 simplex are being used by various car dealerships in Peoria, and Channels 8-14 are being used by various warehouse operations in Goodyear and Litchfield Park.

Repeater Channels 15 (23), 16 (24), 17 (25), 21 (29), and 22 (30) are high-level repeater sites whereas channels 18 (26), 19 (27), and 20 (28) are low-level repeater sites.

 

[hill]

In my area ham activity both repeaters and some that only hang out on simplex. Some of the ham activity is on DMR with a great network of DMR in the state.

Have a few GMRS repeaters that have use plus one had a weekly Tuesday night net with around

A lot of FRS radio traffic is from local businesses.

 

[Whiskey3JMC]

Kids, retailers and Flagger Force are the heaviest FRS users in my area

 

[rk911]

With the advent of cellphones, many people seem to have abandoned 1/2 duplex radios in favor cell phones which they carry everywhere anyway. Recently I've taken to monitoring entire groups of frequencies carved out for private and/or citizen use. CB, FRS, HAM all seem to be down, even business communications seem to have taken a hit. Now the FRS only frequencies (not GMRS) seems to be quite dead in my area and I was wondering, what's it's like in your area?

Do you think the average consumer has simply determined it's not worth carrying a limited range, non-private separate radio around with them when a cell phone they are already paying for will do the job better?

Yup. The FRS radios are suitable for camping trips and other activities where the users will be in relatively close physical contact with each other or local businesses.

 

[rf_patriot200]

Nope, Family Rugrat Service is alive and screaming here.

 

[nokones]

With the expanded FRS use by businesses and commercial entities for their communications needs has definitely freed up the Business Radio Service frequencies in the VHF operating band. I would think that the commercial UHF SMR systems also have taken a big hit.

In the Phoenix Area it appears the Business Radio Service freqs in the VHF Band are no longer widely used by businesses and commercial entities and are more readily available now than they ever were before years ago.

I'm not sure if that is the case with the Business Radio Service freqs in the UHF Band. It may be possible that the UHF Business Radio Service freqs are still being used by SMRs in a digital Trunking environment.

 

[hill]

Would think most of the UHF frequencies have been taking up with DMR and NXDN.

In my area it's DMR mostly. Haven't heard much NXDN and one system have in scanner only the control channels with never receiving any traffic.

 

[RichardKramer]

Kids, retailers and Flagger Force are the heaviest FRS users in my area

Ditto here in Berks Co, & City of Reading; even hear a lot of hunters during the season.

 

[oregontreehugger]

FRS is definitely waaay ahead in use around here. Mostly construction firms working on big projects and flaggers, along with families and even a handful of businesses. I'm sure that has a lot to do with the bubble pack radios that are so widely available.

GMRS use on repeaters seems pretty low and infrequent. CB is pretty quiet, except for random truckers. And MURS is limited to maybe a few local businesses, the Dakota driveway alarms, Garmin's dog collars data chirps, and every now and then a non-business voice user (rare).

 

[PDXh0b0]

had a neighbor family used them for awhile, novelty must have worn off. there's some kids i catch when I'm fishing at horseshoe & a business around woodland that uses them . now an then i overhear some fishing tips by the Lewis river hatchery on frs, though mostly on 70cm

 

[Ubbe]

With the advent of cellphones, many people seem to have abandoned 1/2 duplex radios in favor cell phones which they carry everywhere anyway.

It's similar to where I live but regarding trunked and conventional 2-way radio systems. The activity has gone down to maybe 10% of what it was prior to the Covid-19 outbreak. When people where forced to work from home they learned how to use mobile phone apps with conference and 2-way radio type of group call features and as they already had a phone on them at all times they had an easy way to still communicate with others and also had a better coverage and do not need to pay for airtime in a bigger radio system.

But for the free simplex radio channels and the $8 annual fee ones are the same activity as there always have been. Some people buy a pair of radios from Ebay or AliExpress that comes preprogrammed with FRS/GMRS channels and although those frequencies are used here for other commercial 2-way radio purposes I can hear that they are used and they don't notice that there are other people on the channel as those Baofengs are using a CTCSS tone. Fortunately those frequencies are on our repeaters designated TX output 460-469MHz band.

/Ubbe

 

[jrothwell]

With the advent of cellphones, many people seem to have abandoned 1/2 duplex radios in favor cell phones which they carry everywhere anyway. Recently I've taken to monitoring entire groups of frequencies carved out for private and/or citizen use. CB, FRS, HAM all seem to be down, even business communications seem to have taken a hit. Now the FRS only frequencies (not GMRS) seems to be quite dead in my area and I was wondering, what's it's like in your area?

Do you think the average consumer has simply determined it's not worth carrying a limited range, non-private separate radio around with them when a cell phone they are already paying for will do the job better?

"will do the job better" . Cell phone service still sucks in most places (even in cities and populated areas), it's only 1 to 1 (not 1 to many), most likely running a buggy OS susceptible to crashing and viruses, not very durable, takes a long time to reach someone (not instant), etc...