Why Choose a Digital Radio?

There are many choices when it comes to modern communications. You could choose to use mobile phones, but phones need to have a signal and you can’t easily dial more than one phone at a time. Plus dialing a number and waiting for the call to connect takes time. It is much quicker to push the transmit button on a radio.

Older radios used analog transmission methods. Most of these transmission methods are easy for anyone with a scanner to listen in on. Modern scanners are cheap and can scan across vast ranges of frequencies extremely quickly. Analog transmissions are rarely secure. Analog transmissions are also very susceptible to interferrence. Digital radios bring many advantages over analog. Hiss and crackle are a thing of the past. It is easy to make your transmissions secure using digital encryption and more users can share any given frequency space.

With digital radios you can call individual users or groups of users. You can send text messages and other data such as the users current location. Battery life is typically improved.

POC – PTT Over Cellular.

POC is an alternative to traditional radio. Instead of the radio transmitting a radio signal directly to another radio, POC devices use the cell phone network to carry the signal. By using the cell phone network it is possible to achieve much greater ranges, in fact POC devices can communicate with each other globally. A POC device typically behaves and looks like a normal walkie talkie or mobile radio and is easy to use. POC devices can send text messages, pictures and even video.

So, why not always use POC? There are several reasons why POC is not always the best choice. One is cost. Each POC device needs to have a contract with a cellular provider. In addition a server or contract with a POC service provider is required. Because of this there may be considerably monthly or annual charges associated with a fleet of POC radios. It also needs to be considered that if the cellular network coverage is poor, then your POC devices may not be able to communicate even over short distances. At large events the public use of the local cellular networks can cause network issues and again this can impact POC devices. In emergency or disaster situations access to the cellular networks may be restricted to law enforcement and other government emergency services, shutting out all other users (if you are a genuine accredited emergency services provider you can obtain special sim cards to allow access in emergency situations).

Conventional radio systems can work without needing any external infrastructure. This makes them very reliable and very low cost to run, but generally speaking conventional radio is limited to smaller areas, voice communications or simple text messages. But in an emergency, often simple is better. Both POC and conventional radio have important roles to play in modern communications. We have a range of POC devices for hire and can provide bespoke systems including private PC servers should you need them as well as hybrid POC/Radio systems.