Transmission1

Are the roomours true that Airwaves getting turned off? Going back to analogue?

Yes and no. Airwave is getting switched off, they're going to EE LTE 4g.

So police eat still have radios????

I believe there will be significant investment in a network of telephones, to be located in blue boxes that will be installed around the country.

Individual officers are to be issued with the a personal whistle.

Funny u mention plod radios. Been gifted three HT600E ex Suffolk Plod radios. One is still with all the original channels and it works ok...

C'mon Suffolk Plod.... Make me an offer!

Airwave is not going off. It has just been sold to Motorola for silly money.

The "main" blue light operators are going to "mobile phones" (their own private LTE system on their own frequencies) that EE has won the contract to install.

This still leaves a considerable number of "Airwave sharers".

Once the main blue light boys go then Airwave will more than likely lose their 380mhz allocation since this came from NATO and is public safety only.

However a deal was done with Arqiva a few years ago that Airwave can use the ex-Dolphin spectrum (approx 410 and 420mhz), which doesn't have the CRB checking requirement either, so Airwave could become a "public access" network very much like Dolphin.


How this will stack up in the modern marketplace is yet to be seen. There is no doubt that TETRA is expensive, but I am sure there is perhaps no coincidence that Motorola are announcing Tier 3 DMR infrastructure about the same time.

Things like Ambitalk may or may not be something they haven't counted for. Look at this month's Land Mobile and there is a full page article on Ambitalk expansion, and it is definately slowly but surely growing, despite the "doom and gloom" predictions of some. I think the growth would be a lot quicker if the market was bigger - and that is something which will affect all operators, the market for this kind of product is very small.

However even a very small market, done right with a high-profit business model will be lucrative. Just look at "peculiar" niche markets such as metal-detecting (sorry, this is the first thing that sprung to mind, please don't take any offense anyone!), in which there are some very wealthy manufacturers for a relatively small market.