Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Re:Push-to-Talk market heating up, players jockeying for position

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 23:54:24 -0500

-------- Original Message --------
From: "arclight_arclight <[email-masked]>" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Push-to-Talk market heating up, players jockeying for p osition

 Bill McLain 
<Bill.McLain@r...> wrote:
> We have been promoting a VoIP solution as a backup means of 
communications
> in dispatch centers and the like for a couple of years now.  

Warning: The following contains OPINIONS.  

This is a particularly hot button with me.  I see two problems with 
VoIP, both of which are correctable if someone has the desire to do 
so: (a) lack of stable standards and (b) incomplete vision as applied 
to radio-based problems.  

The lack of a single, common, stable standard is a definite 
hindrance.  I flew back from CA last week with a fellow who is busy 
working on VoIP stuff for the Feds.  Naturally, the big guns (Cisco, 
etc.) are all determined to make it proprietary with them in charge.  
This is helping to stall real progress here.  I asked about Quality 
of Service algorithms (to ensure that packets get delivered in a 
timely fashion) and he told me that folks were designing around 
multiple standards, one of which was the old H.323 standard for IP-
based voice in the videoconferencing arena.  That's YEARS old.  All 
this tells me that VoIP, while definitely the right direction to go, 
still has a way to go yet.  Is it too much to conclude that the "let 
the marketplace decide" approach (which brought us the glories of AM 
stereo) is going to ensure that progress moves only as fast as the 
large guns are willing to allow?

The incomplete vision as applied to RF problems goes like this.  We 
have been dealing with DC and tone remote for the last 500 years or 
so, or at least that's the way it seems.  Apart from a proprietary 
solution by one company that I saw years ago, I really don't think I 
have seen a common packet-based platform for radio control.  What I 
am envisioning is a common control structure that would allow a 
sender to specify frequency or channel, modulation type, etc., etc., 
and have the radio respond with something like "I can do that" or "No 
I can't", or other suitable replies.  I'd throw in to this all the 
common modulation types, sufficient frequency span to handle 
everything from longwave to microwave (don't know what's coming 
next), up to 10,000 memory channels, etc., etc.  If I also get to 
agreement that actual voice transcoding takes place INSIDE THE RADIO 
as opposed to outside, then it becomes possible for me to move from 
one digital modulation scheme to another without loss of 
intelligence.  I think it should also be possible to handle 
encryption as well, remembering that we don't want to have to handle 
encrypted facilities, only encrypted endpoints.  This sets the stage 
for me to crossconnect between disparate services without a huge 
stink, or dinking with audio levels, or etc.,etc., etc.

If implemented in radios, this would naturally set the stage for 3rd 
parties to provide control heads that could talk to multiple radio 
platforms from multiple vendors, and could cross-connect them as 
required.  How's that for interoperability out of the box?  If 
implemented in trunking controllers and base stations, it would be 
possible to reconstruct a trunking system using whatever radios 
happened to be available in the wake of a disaster.  In a post-EMP 
event that might prove to be invaluable.  Interface a radio to a 
local console?  Plug it in and add a software driver to have full 
control of the radio (as opposed to 2 or so frequencies and PTT).

The common control platform may already exist in some form, but I am 
thinking well beyond just traditional land-mobile to a platform that 
would handle everything from LMR to aircraft AM systems to HF SSB to 
whathaveyou, and usable in base stations, mobiles, etc., etc. Isn't 
it time for something like this?  Or am I dreaming solutions to 
problems that don't exist?

I expect that we will eventually get to a VoIP standard that isn't 
proprietary, but that we will NEVER see the common radio-control 
platform.  There just isn't enough distributed clout for it to 
happen.  We'll still be diddling with tone remote when I retire 20 
years from now.

Just my own outgassing.  All replies are certainly welcome, of 
course.  And to quote Jack yet again, "...but I could be wrong."

Dave Maples

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---

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 23:55:44 -0500

-------- Original Message --------
From: Jack Daniel <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Push-to-Talk market heating up, players jockeying for p osition
To: [email-masked]

Good post, arclight.

I had a discussion last week with a couple of cponsole manufactures who
offer VoIP and there was no campatibility. Some mention of a future P25
common interface but no dates, etc.

Your concept would go well with SDR.

I'm still having concerns about VoIP radio network hacking and virii
too.

Jack Daniel
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