I think the bigger question is, will M17 ever be widely adopted and put into use? It isn't looking that way. I've heard about it for years, and I've been hardpressed to even find demonstrations of audio / audio quality let alone support for it in anything other than maybe MMDVM and of ourse DSD-FME
It isn't looking that way.
Where do you look for info?
1. No hardware
CS7000 handheld transceiver runs OpenRTX and supports M17 out of the box:
CS7000-M17
There will be more handhelds with M17 support later this year.
M17 Foundation was formed to ensure M17 doesn't die.
2. No demos
Plenty of net recordings with audio quality depending on users' setups:
M17 Project
3. No software/hardware support
OpenRTX, MMDVM, Pi-Star, WPSD, DVRef, OpenWebRX, SDR++, SDRangel, CC1200 RPi HAT, Module17, gr-m17, libm17 plus
plenty of code on GitHub. I'm sure this list isn't exhaustive. Hell, you can even
run M17 packet mode on a GameBoy Advance and
Nokia 3310. Even PSP3000 offers
some M17 support:
