As many of our readers know, we have not favored MotoTRBO as a digital technology for public safety users, essentially for four basic reasons. Mainly, until now, the XPR8300 repeater station would handle only analog or digital transmissions - not both, which made it unsuitable for a gradual migration to narrow band. This issue has been resolved with the introduction of the MTR3000 as well as an upgrade for existing XPR8300 repeaters. (Note: The XPR8300 will be replaced by the XPR8400 in 2011).
Our second concern was the absence of 2-tone paging in the analog operational mode which virtually eliminated the use of the XPR6550 for use by volunteer fire and rescue users. This has now been corrected.
The third, and most important, issue is lack of compliance with Department of Homeland Security interoperability standards which are based on P25 technology. Unless the entire federal standards are changed, this will continue to be an issue.
Our fourth issue is that MotoTRBO is based on a European operating standard, commonly referred to as DMR (Digital Mobile Radio). Until now, Motorola was the sole vendor for this technology in the USA. I said, until now, because there is now a second supplier of this technology in the USA.
