[TrunkCom] Re: RE: Re: Re: 9.6 K trunked systems

[Dave Emery]

On Sun, Oct 20, 2002 at 12:56:44PM +0100, Ian Wraith wrote:
> Hi Folks
>         Many thanks for clearing up that there are no IP issues with
> 9600 baud control channels. With that being the case I would love to
> know why Uniden haven't included the option to decode these control
> channels in the new scanners - It seems to make no sense at all.

	I'd be willing to speculate one of three reasons..

	1.  They can sell an upgraded model for more $$$ later (same
with the 700 mhz coverage).  Such additional revenue is nice, and very
typical of Uniden's approach to high tech scanning in recent years... I
think they realize that there is a finate market for high end scanners
and rather than selling once to a larger market, they are better off
selling several times to the same fanatics who will buy every new
upgrade if it offers something new that is important to them.   Thus
offering everything in the first model is market suicide for them.

	2.  The cpu won't hack the faster control channel or the error
rate in decoding it in their radio hardware is too high - code needs
tuning or debugging or just more development time and they decided to
release now with 9600 baud disabled in time for Xmas rather than take
the extra two or three months it would take to fix the performance/bug
issues with 9600 baud decoding. This being a simple marketing decision
to go with the old code now during the hot season rather than wait for
the 9600 baud code to work right... in which case later releases of the
code might support 9600 baud in later revisions of the basic product
(but if they can upgrade older radios they aren't going to admit it
readily, since this implies that the chips are flash and potentially
field upgradable to enable cell coverage).

	3.  Someone in government (presumably LEA) or maybe Motorola
persuaded them not to release 9600 baud for a while in order to give
existing system users an option for limited short term privacy short of
encryption by switching to 9600 baud while they buy or upgrade radios
and other infrastructure capable of encryption.  Perhaps the threat
of not approving the digital scanners, or sponsoring legislation to
ban them, or challenging Uniden on intellectual property grounds would
be enough to make them take 9600 baud out for the first release
(especially in consideration of #1 above).

	In any case the obvious short term solution for those who really
need 9600 baud is for someone to upgrade trunker to use sound card
decoding rather than data slicers and handle 9600 baud control channel
signalling (something needed anyway) and for users to control the radio
with a laptop or PDA running trunker or similar code and leave the trunk
tracking to trunker controlling the 785D over a serial port. The radio
will presumably decode digital audio on 9600 baud control channel
systems just fine... so all one needs is trunk tracking done externally
which has none of the IP licensing issues of software IMBE decoders.
And one can use an older 780 or other available scanner for the control
channel radio - one does not need two 785Ds.

-- 
	Dave Emery N1PRE,  die@die.com  DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass. 
PGP fingerprint = 2047/4D7B08D1 DE 6E E1 CC 1F 1D 96 E2  5D 27 BD B0 24 88 C3 18