Could DMR challenge P25 in the Americas?
Around the world, P25 is largely considered the ideal public safety platform for interoperability, allowing multiple government organizations to talk together. But what about DMR?
According to critical communications manufacturer Simoco; in the Americas purchasing critical communications technology – primarily the infrastructure portables and mobiles – can be too expensive for some agencies. The company states on their website that from 2000-2005, there were many grants available from the Department of Homeland Security to fund P25 systems. Yet, a decade later, the funding is far more limited than before which is forcing some governments to rethink their emergency communications strategy.
As Simoco is actively engaged in both technologies, they realized that today's agencies are looking for alternative solutions that offer the same, or enhanced features and functionality at a lower cost than P25. In North America and Canada, some agencies are looking at Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) as a viable option. This is not strange, as DMR also offers reliable and wide area coverage, it trumps P25 from a cost perspective. For example, the average DMR portable can be as much as 60% cheaper than a P25 portable. With budgets so tight nowadays, this is a highly attractive benefit.
Another key selling point for DMR is that it has a simplified architecture, making the implementation process (and indeed the learning curve for users) much easier. Public safety agencies are able to get a DMR system up and running sooner than a P25 system.
Simoco's own DMR solution offers fully distributed, open standards based architecture that doesn’t require any site, regional or central switching elements. It gives public safety agencies the ultimate level of system resilience at the lowest possible cost.
