Slow migration from Analogue to Digital Radio Communications in South Africa
Digital is fast changing the landscape of the land mobile radio (LMR) industry bringing with it spectrum efficiency, the addition of data and by and large, superior quality of communication.
While smaller companies are still hanging onto the legacy analogue FM radio systems, the larger organisation are moving to digital mobile radio (DMR) and terrestrial trunked radio (TETRA) says Brett Nash, MD of Altech Radio Holdings.
For some time spectrum or rather lack of spectrum has been a big issue which resulted in the development of digital systems. DMR was launched by Motorola in 2007. It immediately doubled the talk path on each allocated frequency. At the time the industry was looking for an easy migration path from analogue to digital and DMR, using the same channel spacing as the legacy analogue equipment was the answer. Both could operate on the same frequency which meant that companies could plan the migration over time.
The relatively recent introduction of cost effective radios that operate on both analogue and digital, along with the lack of clear guidelines from the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) to drive the migration from digital to analogue technologies, is the reason for the slow uptake.
While ICASA has not issued any guidelines or set a time frame by when companies should migrate from analogue to digital, the Authority is reticent to license new analogue systems. In other parts of Africa the DMR uptake is much higher, varying from 30 and 90%. The main reason is that some of the countries are early adopters is because they have no legacy systems so could go digital from the outset.
Brett said that the analogue systems are walkie talkie stuff. In the analogue world there is a saying “whoever pushes the talk button is king” – a good example is in the mining industry, where in a disaster situation congestion could result in challenges with communicating on an analogue system when everyone grabs and presses the PTT button.
He added that while the company has established a national DMR network, “Fleetcall” covering the major routes and metropolitan areas, many companies have established their own networks and in many cases link into the Fleetcall network for national coverage. Full article
