If you are a modern-day police scanner nerd like myself, and have done your homework on the new Digital Trunking systems that are being implemented, they are not 100% reliable. There is a clear myth that exist with the new trunking systems that they are more dependable. That is simply not the case. There have been numerous occasions when a police office or fireman has called for an immediate backup only to find his call for help was un-readable by fellow officers or the dispatch center. It is suppose to be a virtual fail-safe modern day tech, but it has proven otherwise. Bottom line .... There is NO SYSTEM THAT IS 100 PERCENT! Period! Especially the new P25 or other systems.
It is more a question is if the system is using simulcast and voting technology that does increase a radio system's coverage reliability. That in fact has more of an affect to the end user than trunking, unless of course the system was built with too few channels and keeps going into the busy que.
Systems are typicially built to a 95/95 standard (95% area/95% of the time) so by design no system is 100%, but is that 95% area in-building, outdoor or mobile only? And if it is 95% in-building is that light density, medium density, or heavy density?
So to simplify my statement, the end users typicially only sees the effects of coverage and not that the system trunks or not because of the end-users requirements to work over a specific area and no 2 points within those areas are exactly the same.
