Joint Whitepaper Explores Increase in DMR Tier III Adoption 
for Mission Critical Communications

The white paper outlines the steady growth and evolution path of DMR Tier III technology and provides a comprehensive analysis on its market demand and future adoption in vertical sectors such as Enterprise, Transportation, Utilities and Public Safety.

DMR Tier II conventional technology has traditionally been a business-critical technology, supplying communications for enterprise users. With the introduction of DMR Tier III trunking, the public safety and security markets are recognizing DMR as a viable technology for mission-critical applications. With a full complement of features designed with mission-critical users in mind, DMR Tier III trunking is gaining a global foothold in the Public Safety and security markets. By the year 2021, the Public Safety vertical is expected to account for nearly 35% of all DMR Tier III shipments worldwide.

According to the white paper, a key driver in the adoption of DMR technology is the rapid worldwide migration to digital technology. Historically, LMR (licensed mobile radio) communications technologies utilized analogue operation. However, today’s LMR market is advanced, forward-thinking and fast-paced, with innovative technologies, concepts, and integrations hitting the market regularly. Recent technology announced by leading players for DMR Tier II, NXDN and dPMR have incorporated equipment supporting communications on both analogue and digital networks – thus facilitating this transition. DMR Tier III technology has benefited from the transformation, growing as a competitive protocol for the Public Safety sector and becoming a mainstream technology for Utilities, Transportation, and Enterprise industries worldwide.

Convergence is anticipated to be the future of the critical communications industry. As more countries begin considering their roadmap to broadband LTE communications systems, hybrid solutions will form a large part of the transition economy. In short, LTE will complement critical voice with data, rather than replacing PMR altogether. With enhanced system design, security protection and encryption, DMR Tier III technology provide a clear evolution path to LTE migration in the form of a converged PMR + LTE solution, which will ultimately be required to make any LTE transition viable. A converged DMR and LTE solution includes a dual-mode radio which can connect to a cellular network in addition to the DMR network, which allows video uploading and video calls via the commercial network while connecting to the DMR network for mission and business-critical voice.

“Globally, the number of PMR users has continued to grow even as LTE emerges on the world stage. PMR, with its high resilience, low latency, instant one-to-many communications and rich feature set, will continue to provide mission-critical voice communications, while LTE supplements this capability with enhanced data services. One of the main drivers behind the growing PMR market is increasing digitization, with digital technology offering enhanced voice communications,” commented Ryan Darrand, Senior Analyst of IHS Markit.

IHS Markit projects that the number of digital PMR users will nearly double between 2017 and 2021 bringing the total to 44 million active users. The number of digital PMR users exceeded the number of analogue users for the first time in 2017 leaving a high number of analogue users in the market. The availability of many digital standards including TETRA, P25, DMR, dPMR, NXDN, and PDT contribute to this growth from analogue to digital. This growth trend is expected to continue between 2017 and 2021 as business-critical users in the developed world migrate to digital, and the popularity of trunked systems continue to appeal to mission-critical users.

“The PMR industry has been facing rapid development in recent years from analog to digital and from narrowband to broadband. Amid the substantial transformation, narrowband technologies like DMR Tier II and Tier III technologies played a critical role and provided vital linkages between those two epochal transitions,” said Ke Wang, General Manager of DMR System Development of Hytera Communications. “As a key player in DMR, Hytera has greatly pushed forward the development of DMR standard and popularized DMR technology all around the world in the past decade. By the end of 2017, Hytera has deployed over 8,000 base stations, and shipped more than 1 million trunked terminals, owning the largest market share as the market leader in the DMR Tier III segment. Our DMR Tier III solution has been widely adopted by Public Safety users in the world like Croatia Police, Turkey Police, Philippines National Police, Guatemala National Police and China Police, making it a reliable technology for mission-critical communications.”

Download Whitepaper