May 2020 Global Digital Repeater Roundup

Two times each year, HVDN tracks the total growth of digital voice repeaters.  Since 2016, there has been a tremendous increase of repeaters that support DMR, P25, NXDN, Fusion and D-Star digital voice amateur communication. 

Much has happened in the world since October 2019 and it does not seem like repeater growth trends have been drastically affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic after looking at the May 2020 data.  

All data pulled for this update was done on May 29th 2020 at 3:00 PM Eastern US time.

May 2020 Global Digital Voice Repeater Roundup

The data source used to compile this information is repeaterbook.com which is often very reliable and accurate.  

There are no major surprises across the top 3 adopted digital voice modes other than that D-Star continues to trend towards stagnation with a measly 0.74% growth in new repeater deployments globally in the last 9 months.  

For comparison, Fusion has grown 2.7% in the same period and DMR has an impressive 7.7% increase since our last update.

The only networks seeing more traffic on them are those that are driven by DMR.  Spending time in different virtual rooms in Fusion and D-Star have not seen much change, but DMR is a different story with Brandmeister, TGIF and DMR+ being just three networks enabled by DMR with many more users.

While Yaesu Fusion (C4FM) and Icom D-Star (GFSK) are the only "amateur only" digital modes, DMR (TDMA) thanks to its open standard is more unique and is why its the most popular with equipment vendors. Different products on the market drive more interest and purchases, which also drives reason behind repeaters for being around in the first place.

A blend of both commercial and amateur grade hand held and mobile radio DMR products create a wider multi-vendor ecosystem for users to select equipment from which helps the demand for additional repeaters.

Comparing Modes (Commercial & Amateur)

In comparison,  NXDN and P25 only have commercial products to chose from since they are directed at professional users. These are often only adopted by the amateur radio community as second hand or used products mainly due to original high costs.  

While limited ranges of attainable equipment for NXDN and P25 inhibits wide scale adoption by radio amateurs, it is interesting to see that P25 has a 6.7% growth of digital repeaters in the last 9 months which may be due to commercial equipment coming out of service and finding an immediate second life in the amateur radio community. 

In regards to NXDN, there is a much smaller set of data is available with more than 70% less NXDN repeaters compared to P25. 

The growth of NXDN repeaters has been a crazy 52.4% growth since HVDN started tracking the data four years ago, but at 126 repeaters globally, you have limited options compared to other modes.

Why does DMR keep growing?

If there is one thing that has been made clear in past articles, the main reason why DMR continues to see wide adoption is cheap equipment.   

First, lets look at Icom and the D-Star ecosystem.  Late 2016 is when the first non-Icom branded D-Star radio came to market since 2004.  

The Kenwood TH-D74 marked a momentous occasion for D-Star enthusiasts, but at over $500 USD, only very picky amateurs have purchased this radio and many of them buying it for the total sum of all other features and not just D-Star.

In comparison to the pricey Kenwood TH-D74 which has been reviewed here on HVDN as well as used to demonstrate satellite communications at public events, the Icom ID-51A Plus 2 model up until recently retailed for $349.95 USD as the only other dual band D-Star capable hand held radio. 

The Anytone D878 is considered the current "flagship" DMR dual band handheld at only $209 USD for comparison.

Icom: Cause and effect

Icom has decided to discontinue this radio and blames the inability to source components for it thanks to supply chain disruptions in China during the Corona Virus situation.  

This honestly sounds like an excuse to either let D-Star finally die off or for them to reboot Icom around a lower cost range of equipment like what Yaesu has done to propel its Fusion ecosystem to new heights.

The real curious thing right now about Icom without a dual band digital voice D-Star handheld radio is that its upcoming but also delayed portable HF/VHF/UHF IC-705 radio was to use the same battery pack as the ID-51 series.  

If Icom will turn the corner and be relevant in a post COVID world, they need to release the IC-705 and also put out battery compatible hand held radios to drive an Icom lifestyle ecosystem.  

The strategy they hinted at in building an ecosystem around a common accessory such as a battery would have been genius, but now it looks like many are confused as to what is going on with that company.

Feeling the Fusion with Yaesu

Its not worth spending much time talking about Yaesu as they launched a number of mono and dual band fusion capable radios at affordable prices and this seems to have worked well for them if we go on the growth of repeaters when most mobile users depend on reliable communication infrastructure to communicate through.  

The FT-3200DR 2m only Fusion mobile though was just discontinued after a short life on the market, but the identical FTM-3207DR for 70cm use is still an active product at less than $180 for a 55 W UHF only radio. 

Right now it appears the new FTM-300DR (pictured below) dual band mobile for under $500 will be a popular new radio as a slightly less expensive option compared to the $100+ more expensive FTM-400XDR.  

But, for those looking for a dual band fusion mobile on a budget, the FTM-7250DR at less than $220 is a tough deal to beat and for even Icom to compete with in the mobile category.

Yaesu even seems to have worked out the strategy for hand held radios by offering its FT-70 dual band Fusion radio for around $170 USD and as low as $130 USD on sale.  They also have the higher end and feature packed FT-3DR for $389.99 USD.  

Essentially with Yaesu Fusion, for under $400 in total, you could buy at FT-70 handheld plus an FTM-7250 mobile and that is hard to beat even compared to any DMR or D-Star combination of both categories.

The change of Yaesu's portfolio and pricing tiers started in 2018, for technology that rolled out in 2013.  Prior to 2018, Fusion seemed to be on life support much like D-Star has been for at least the last ten years. It is good to see Yaesu leveraging the supply chain and listening to customers to drive its business.

If anyone caught reference to using a bonsai tree as the banner image for this article, its pretty clear that one of the two Japanese vendors has intentionally stunted growth for its digital voice strategy for the foreseeable future. 

HVDN does hope this near term three step backward approach from Icom may take them five steps forward via the IC-705 and possibly some new D-Star equipment offered by Icom or maybe another vendor like Kenwood, which has also dwarfed its product portfolio in recent years. Both vendors may surprise the community if they have been watching Yaesu, Anytone and others with competing digital voice offerings. 

China:  Land of the DMR radio vendor

In our October 2019 update, we mentioned the Anytone D578 pictured below which is the first true dual band, dual receive DMR radio available on the market. 

This, plus the popular CSI, TYT and a few other products give the community more choice for use in a car or fixed location where higher transmit power is sought after as compared to the vendor lock in strategy employed by Yaesu and Icom.

With the current economic and political situations influenced by COVID-19,  there could be a huge opportunity for Icom to ditch D-Star or introduce a dual D-Star/DMR product that would be a total game changer, especially if it incorporates AX.25 based APRS plus D-APRS along with the D-RATS capability. 

This is just wishful thinking now and it should be interesting to see what is new on the market in October 2020 and how repeater deployments trend through the rest of this and into next year.