Any system CAN fail, but the more complex you make it, the more likely it WILL fail! In the days of telephone lines controlling base stations(OMG am I that old) The main point of failure was almost always the phone line, always looks good to a telco employee when he wants to steal a line for another use, nice and quiet. Even more so when a county has it's own microwave that would fail weekly. So each agency that I worked for had a backup located in their building that would suffice until the line was fixed. Even to the point where calls could be relayed from mobile to mobile. With lower power 800mhz you can't do that unless you are policing Mayberry. All systems may have coverage issues, but they can be remediated a lot easier than some of the newer systems. Mandating building owners to install in house repeaters is a fix, but one that should not have been had to be if the system had been designed properly in the first place. My overall point is that the vendors are making these systems too complex for what they are being used for. I would rather have to go and switch circuits to a back up base or repeater with less coverage than have to figure out what F'd up in a multisite digital trunked system, while the whole system is down with NO communications.
