Fall 2023: Global Digital Repeater Roundup (+ HVDN PSA)

 

If you build it, they will come is how the saying goes, right?  When it comes to digital voice modes today in amateur radio, the best way to chart the growth of the most popular modes is by looking at repeater deployments.

No individual, club or group of people will invest the time, money and annoyances to deploy a repeater on common amateur VHF and UHF spectrum unless they know there are people who will use it.   And, for people to use a repeater they need the appropriate radio which uses the appropriate mode or modes of communication. This means that people need to coordinate and that is not always easy.

Going into our 13th edition of the global amateur radio repeater round up over the last seven years, no one can argue where the direction of digital voice is headed, but where are the actual users today?

Please review any of the past linked articles for expanded commentary on mode specific drivers such as new radios or features related to different modes because this update will take a different direction.

As we can see in above chart, DMR continues to grow but there are so many splintered networks such as Brandmeister, TGIF and FreeDMR which make it frustratingly interesting for new joiners to figure out how to find people given that each network is separate and each uses its own talk groups/destinations unless they are content with using a hotspot.

A hotspot is under 100% control of the user compared to a repeater, so allowing your hotspot to go to different networks (on DMR) or other modes as well as any of the destinations (talk groups, bridges, reflectors, etc) is possible. Repeaters do not permit that, but that is not the intent anyway.

DMR Networks:  Lessons in diplomacy

While Brandmeister is still the most popular, not every DMR repeater will support talk groups the same way which forces some users to use a hotspot.   This make programming radios a challenge for some people as well as those that are experienced in keeping radio programming up to date as it relates to repeaters.

For new users who look for local repeaters that have DMR, the same talk group (Example:  31368) will not reach the same people if they are on a different network, unless someone created a bridge but that sort of defeats the purpose for different networks anyway. This frustrates people since DMR is not just DMR, its DMR that is implemented at the network level differently.

This network flexibility has proven to be a benefit and a curse at the same time for DMR, but that is ok because its still the most popular and lowest cost entry to digital voice. DMR has also proven to be the driver behind many innovations on network capability which the others did not focus on.

Any Pi-Star or the WPSD/W0CHP variant running on an inexpensive hotspot is just like having your own repeater though and you can set it up however you wish. 

It is estimated by HVDN that there is 70:1 ratio of hotspots sold compared to digital voice repeaters currently online.  At any given moment according to Brandmeister, there are well over 15,000 hotspots connected at any time. Currently, there are only a little over 11,000 digital voice repeaters, so that means that its possible there have been over 700,000 hot spots sold. 

There are many amateurs, including myself that have had multiple hotspots over the years and those I no longer used, were sold/given to others in the hobby.   Its easy to think that many interested in digital voice likely have or have had in excess of three or more hotspots so that 700,000 number is actually pretty modest and is probably too low.

Digital voice repeaters do not all need the internet

DMR also as a reminder does not need the internet and there are repeaters that provide only local coverage and users do not need to be registered via a central user database, even though it helps to have an ID linked to your callsign from https://www.radioid.net/ 

Yaesu Fusion and Icom's D-Star have a more tightly controlled network to connect repeaters to for those wishing to communicate via the aid of the internet, but also can be configured for local only coverage, but there are likely far less repeaters using these modes which operate that way. Registering on the Icom D-Star network can be annoying and Fusion while easier, still requires registration for internet access.

The commercial modes like P25 and NXDN can be deployed any way the repeater owner wants, but these will never reach the same scale as DMR or dedicated vendor modes because handheld or mobile equipment is not designed with the radio amateur in mind as its main buyer.

Here is the actual data for repeaters globally by mode and surveyed twice a year along with matching compound annual growth for period by period and total growth.

Eight Repeaters:  And growing.....

Now lets look at the M17 mode again which was designed by amateurs for amateurs, but there are no commercially made handheld or mobile radios available to support this just yet.  

Instead, for the time being its easy to purchase a few auxiliary devices which connect to 9600bd capable mobile radios to allow them to transmit and receive M17 protocol. 

There are also a few other devices such as transceiver capable SDR devices like a HackRF, Caribou or LimeSDR which can be used with software like SDRangel on a computer to communicate M17 mode.

Ready to purchase equipment will be available so anyone can use M17 for radio to radio communications, or radio to repeater to radio communications with or without the internet. Pictured above is the small batch run M17 board that only maybe a dozen people in the world currently have which converts any 9600md radio into a M17 radio.

Currently there are eight listed M17 repeaters on www.repeaterbook.com and this is three more since May 2023. 

North America as of the time of this article has a four M17 repeaters

And the remaining four elsewhere in the world can be seen below.

The current state of M17 is the "sweet spot" for HVDN given our focusing on emerging technologies that have evolved from ideation to "beta release"  easily accessible for those motivated to hands-on experiment and collaboratively discover versus appliance focused push button operators.

Over the last seven years as digital has become mainstream, those who consider themselves early adopters have moved on to other things.  It appears that M17 is the going to be the new playground for those looking for something new.

M17 is also not just voice communications since it also handles text. All the digital voice modes allow for this, but not many people use them.  It is this non-voice capability which HVDN will be spending more time focusing on in our build out.

Let's Just Wait:  Club Excuses

When HVDN was created in 2016, it was to partially provide intelligence to the local area here in New York who needed education about the most popular digital modes and assist those with becoming familiar with what turned out to be DMR as predicted. Now seven years later, not much has changed in the region. This has been a success, but only if you add up all the people who bought DMR radios and hotspots and not who use them every day, like an HF radio or 2m analog radio.

Eventually, just talking radio to hotspot to internet to hotspot to radio sort of gets boring. Am I wrong?  No.

The challenge is that still seven years later, the New York area and Hudson Valley specifically has not done anything innovative when it comes to embracing digital voice or infrastructure.  

The local ARRL  leadership excluding a few recent changes and leading clubs in our area continue and constantly fall back on "low effort" activities like HF contests, actual hamfests that do not get cancelled, recurring entry-level presentations, etc and ignore the fact that in order to attract and retain members, various leading edge activities and the infrastructure to connect them are needed

Amateur radio is different things to different people and many clubs complain about dwindling membership, lack of treasury or lack of engaged members.  None of them actually try to fix this known issue or make it hard for those willing to fix them. Events and new technology are needed to maintain and grow.

HVDN started off strong but only to be overwhelmed by some who just wanted the same thing, so now we will further distance ourselves from the general interest community's instead of being forced to embrace the failures by other clubs.

Tell me where the freaks at!

As 2023 now comes to a close, the seven year experiment ends and moves to the next phase.  HVDN will be focusing on building out its network in order to put the Hudson Valley on the map even more so and to attract like minded individuals to its membership ranks. 

Our first experiments with membership driven models did not allow us to target the right people, so those who were paid members have not been asked for dues in about three years to bring us back to zero and move to our new membership model. 

Between technologies such as M17 and LoRa, there will be some interesting things ahead for HVDN. Our suggestion is other area clubs better get ready or get left in the analog dust.

The member rates for HVDN will also be changing to raise the bar even higher and to act as a nice filter to retain and reward our contributing members in current standing. Let the rumble begin! 

SPECIAL EDITION: 10,000+ Digital Repeaters - October 2021 Global Digital Repeater Roundup

Major Digital Milestone Reached!

In May 2021, HVDN reported that we were creeping ever closer to that 10,000 digital repeater mark and as of our October survey of repeaterbook.com data this important date in amateur radio history is here with 10,035 digital amateur radio repeaters now tracked.  

Here is the latest data based on our semi annual collection efforts since 2016, but no data was collected in 2017.

Our first near casualty of  the digital evolution

Someone will really need to look hard at repeaterbook.com data to ensure accuracy of these D-Star tabulations since it appears that 21 less D-Star repeaters exist in October 2021 compared to May 2021.

It is pretty well documented by now thanks to HVDN and pretty much any radio amateur today that DMR is by far the most popular digital voice mode today with an impressive 155.35% increase over the last 5 years.  

Still don't believe you, my local 2m FM repeater is just fine! 

For those into more fancy math if we are talking about growth or declines, compound annual growth rates (CAGR) are often used in different industries to track growth over a certain period. Over the past five years, DMR is still leading the pack at 20.62% CAGR.

However,  beyond the two dedicated non-commercial amateur modes known as Yaesu Fusion and Icom D-Star, it certainly seems interesting that the commercial P25 standard is growing faster than DMR.  

Using repeaters to track the healthy growth of amateur radio is smart.  Repeaters are expensive and local people with radios are needed to create a need for them to exist or to influence what to purchase. This is why counting repeaters is a great proxy to measure growth and adoption trends.

However, some areas do not have many digital voice repeaters but users are purchasing certain digital radios to use with hotspots. Many of these additional digital adopters are likely learning towards DMR or Fusion as a "my first digital radio" rather than D-Star or the two commercial modes known as P25 and NXDN.

Our secret digital future is already here

We have seen new products brought to market by smaller commercial companies and entrepreneurs, such as the RFinder series of DMR smartphone radios thanks to Bob W2CYK.   

New networks run entirely by the radio amateur community like Brandmeister Network and its amazing development team have opened new doors to expand all digital voice modes, including an entirely new up-and-coming amateur created mode such as M17 thanks to Wojciech SP5WWP.

The community also even has other entirely open source network tools such as DV Switch,  HBlink plus the amazing MMDVM and Pi-Star projects that Andy MW0MWZ, Jonathan G4KLX, Andy CA6JAU and others created to let us use repeaters or hotspots and fanned the flames of the digital evolution fire probably the most.

And, how could I not mention the work that folks like Roger VK3KYY are doing with OpenGD77 plus the equally fine development around OpenRTX which both help create new ways to use existing radios for digital communications, such as the case with modifying the cult favorite TYT MD-380 DMR radio to be used as M17.

We should expect some exciting times ahead for amateur radio as we also cross the boundaries of generational differences for people born after 1980 who will be entering later career stages and will have even more time for amateur radio experimentation.

Maybe its popular somewhere else?

Different parts of the world are at a crossroads today when it comes to adopting or retiring certain types of equipment. 

This is something which HVDN will further track publicly going forward since as the below chart indicates the current split between North America and Rest of World digital voice repeater data.

With M17 Project starting to get more attention, especially with a large investment enabled by non-profit entities Amateur Radio Digital Communications and Open Research Institute it is just a matter of time before something groundbreaking grabs mass attention.

What is next?

Many people do not have the attention span to read articles like this, but they need to pay attention to what is being discussed here very closely if you care about your amateur radio hobby.

Here is my prediction for the next two years (2022 and 2023) for digital repeater counts

While spending time within the HF spectrum chasing rare stations or park activators is good fun and will only get easier as the 11 year sunspot cycle matures over the next few years, do not forget about next generation technology.  

Spending more time on SSB during a 20m contest or CW on 40m will not propel the hobby forward for the next generation. Same also with using local 2m analog only repeaters for casual morning gatherings.

Please, spend some time experimenting with different technologies, modes and new ways of thinking and challenge yourself to try and keep track of how much time you spend in different aspects of the hobby month by month or year by year.   

The more time spent on the future will secure our past and ensure amateur radio exists for the next 100 years. 

Feel free to share some comments below on this and check out our past articles to learn what we are doing which may inspire you to get involved with something new in the future of digital amateur radio.

 Awaiting your rotten tomatoes,

Steve K2GOG

Co-Founder HVDN

So how is NXDN doing these days?

In May 2019, I wrote an article entitled "NXDN: What is it and where is it?". I predicted at the time that this other commercial digital voice mode would start to see some more growth within the amateur radio community and here we now are roughly 18 months later and my theory was correct.

As of December 27th 2020, there are now a global total of 3,657 registered NXDN users via the radioid.net website. 

While this is a healthy 86.2% increase since 2016,  the volume of users compared to DMR is still much smaller.  The current number of global registered amateur DMR users is up to 182,082 for comparison.

These two points illustrate that amateur radio operators want another option over the closed source Yaesu Fusion and Icom D-Star options that were designed for amateur radio people who want to experiment with digital voice technology.

Why is NXDN growing?

If you have a digital hotspot like one of many Pi-Star based options or the Shark RF Open Spot series, chances are you have encountered the "mode translation" functions that allows a user of certain types of modes to talk to others with a different capability radio on the other end.

Technically speaking, the best digital voice mode is Yaesu's C4FM FDMA based Fusion if you want to transcode to other digital voice modes, but it offers no digital data capability like that of D-Star or DMR.  DMR is the second most popular mode to transcode with, even though it also has the most users and repeaters globally. Here are the current transcoding options in Pi-Star.

Surplus commercial NXDN radios have become more inexpensive today and many amateur radio operators may decide to purchase NXDN native equipment after they realized a better experience can be had by not using mode translation thanks to a hotspot. 

The rise of NXDN is further validated in the details behind this article below.

NXDN Repeaters

Twice a year, I take a look at the repeater book website and compile data to track the growth of digital voice mode repeaters globally and I have been doing this since 2016. 

Chances are if someone is willing to invest in building a repeater, usually that means that there are users that will help make use of that investment.  

My work helps look at these trends over time to help the amateur radio community decide where they should invest in when it comes to digital voice capabilities. 

This also helps those interested in deploying repeaters so as to help make robust area wide communication networks that will have some level of interoperability.

According to repeaterbook.com since October 2016 to present, there has been a 70.7% increase in NXDN repeaters globally, but that translates to only 140 repeaters today compared to the 82 of them four years ago.  

Two NXDN repeaters have been added since our October 2020 Global Digital Repeater article

111 of the 140 NXDN repeaters can be found in North America, so this growth around NXDN repeaters seems isolated to only part of the world. 

These NXDN repeater numbers still are almost like a rounding error compared to the explosive growth we have seen with DMR, but times may be changing based on user growth patterns.

One would think on the surface that this is not important, but it actually is when looking at the next generation of digital voice that will take over from TDMA based DMR and will likely be an FDMA based option.

Outside the top 10 NXDN repeater states, 38.7% of remaining repeaters account for the other 43 across North America. Two of the top ten actually fall within Canada.

Users & Repeaters

If you happen to live in the top 3 of Florida, Massachusetts or Arkansas, it seems that the theory of comparing registered users to the number of repeaters is pretty darn accurate, but with a few exceptions.

In North America, there are a total of 1386 registered users in North America that are not living in one of the top 10 NXDN repeater states. Out of of a North America total of 2186 registered NXDN users, that is 63% which is sort of interesting.

With a total of 782 total users living inside those top 10 destinations, there are a few states such as California (144), Texas (97), Ohio (84), New York (81), Alabama (68), Georgia (68) and Pennsylvania (67) which are intermixed among the top 10 of states with the most registered users but do not have a matching growth number of repeaters. Many of those users are likely just using NXDN over a hotspot rather than a repeater.

Considering that large populations of people and amateur radio operators live in many of those other top registered NXDN user states

Its probable that those would be the next likely places which will see more NXDN repeaters and then fuel a huge increase of registered NXDN users in those areas in the next few years. This will be the litmus point to look back on in another 12 months to see how things are headed for NXDN.

A great example to follow when thinking about successful NXDN deployments in Florida is the NI4CE system. Its no wonder now why NXDN is popular in parts of Florida and some of the neighboring states of Alabama and Arkansas.  Feel free to comment below if you live in Florida and care to share some tips with New York, as we know there are many transplants down there. 

Are you saying I need to buy a NXDN radio?

The good news is that many MMDVM based DMR repeaters can easily switch over to NXDN with a few simple software changes. The bad news is that if you bought a DMR radio, you will not be able to use that on a DMR repeater.

For the best answer about what to purchase, stick with DMR for now unless NXDN is popular in your area. If a vendor offers a NXDN radio at prices like we have seen with DMR, that is what will make NXDN get even more popular, but its still at least a few years away.

Instead, have a look at the M17 standard which was invented by amateur radio operators and is FDMA based just like NXDN and Yaesu Fusion.  

While none of these modes are cross compatible, it does show that the evolution of digital voice is likely to be FDMA based and a multi vendor ecosystem like we have seen with the TDMA based DMR will need to be part of it.

NXDN and DMR will help pave the way for M17 unless Yaesu and Icom decide to get with the plan. Even Alinco has been focused on DMR and even has commercial NXDN equipment already on offer.

NXDN: What is it and where is it?

Digital Mobile Radio or DMR for short is where most of the digital voice activity is taking place in amateur radio today followed closely by Yaesu's C4FM based System Fusion.

On the rise, but still far away in terms of users and repeaters is NXDN.  Just like DMR, NXDN is an open standard and was jointly developed by Icom and Kenwood, who in the amateur radio world only have the well aged D-Star mode on offer to cater to digital voice amateur enthusiasts.

Yaesu Fusion is not an open standard although it shares some similar attributes with NXDN because of underlying technology. Alinco is the only current non-Chinese original vendor to offer an amateur grade DMR radio.

The History of NXDN

After 3 years of development, the NXDN standard was finalized in 2005 and product aimed towards commercial users appeared one year later.

NXDN is based around frequency division, multiple access technology which allows different communication streams to run concurrently with only minor frequency separation.  While Yaesu Fusion is also FDMA based, it is not compatible with NXDN or dPMR, which is starting to become popular as PMR or FRS unlicensed analog radio replacements in certain parts of the world.

DMR which is TDMA or time division multiple access based interweaves two different communication streams together in one 12.5 kHz wide channel. 

NXDN can make used of its FDMA technology to run in either a signal communication stream mode in a channel that is 6.25 kHz wide or marry two streams together and still work in one 12.5 kHz stream.  DMR can only work in one 12.5 kHz channel and offers no narrow band option.

Both NXDN and DMR can support voice/voice, data/data or voice/data essentially at the same time in the same 12.5 kHz channel which is very efficient. DMR is the only mode in use today in amateur radio that is actively capable to support this "two discussions, on the same frequency, at the same time" functionality though.

As of the time of this article, the only way for amateur radio operators to use NXDN is through commercial new or surplus equipment. There is not one single amateur grade or market NXDN radio available.  It is possible for users of Yaesu Fusion and DMR to talk to NXDN users by way of mode translation offered my MMDVM hotspots, but this is not the same as native speaking NXDN to NXDN radio.

In past HVDN articles, we have covered the rise of DMR by looking at the number of repeaters deployed globally.  When it comes to NXDN, we will track registered users and also repeaters moving forward starting with this article.

United States: NXDN Amateur Adoption 

DMR started life as a commercial communications solution but in a few short years started to see second life in amateur radio. NXDN may be the eventual front runner for digital amateur communication for a few reasons. Lets first look at the current state of NXDN adoption in the United States which holds much of the global activity so far.

As of the May 2019, there are only 1,963 global registered users ID's for NXDN and 61.6% of them are in the United States. 

Of the 61 represented countries in the radioid.net database, 6 other countries capture 20.3% of the remaining NXDN ID's which leaves 54 countries around the world to account for the remaining 18% of users not yet accounted for.

The total number of NXDN user IDs grouped by major geographic regions indicate that the south eastern part of the country is the hotbed for NXDN users with Florida and Arkansas holding the two largest pools of users as of the time of this article.

Another view through the lens of FCC amateur radio regions illustrates that regions 1, 4, and 5 are far ahead of the rest of the country. With a total of 20 states represented out of 51 (Including D.C), there is much room to grow in other areas.

NXDN United States Amateur Repeaters

Over the last few years,  HVDN has used repeaterbook.com to keep track of digital voice repeater data with our latest tracker being issued just before Hamvention 2019.

In the data captured on May 9th 2019, there were 119 NXDN repeaters globally.  With Hamvention over, there is already one additional NXDN repeater according to the same data source bringing the total to 120.

NXDN: Future Outlook

With only commercial equipment for both radios and repeaters being available to amateur radio operators, should a vendor such as Icom or Kenwood introduce the next generation of digital voice radio based around NXDN, they may possibly create a similar growth trajectory that DMR has experienced in recent years. 

This may put Yaesu in a tough position to maintain control over its single vendor C4FM/FDMA/YSF/Fusion ecosystem unless it opens up its standard to all other vendors to promote inter-operable digital voice radios across vendors. 

Chinese vendors like Ailunce,  TYT, Radioddity and Retevis may also be challenged to compete, but may eventually offer lower cost NXDN equipment. Alinco does currently offer NXDN capable radio such as the DJ-NX40, but is aimed at commercial users.

Further reading:

• May 2019 Global Digital Repeater Roundup

• October 2018 Global Digital Repeater Roundup

• Digital Voice Radio Made In South Dakota?

• Watch! Two Time Slots In Action

• That was quick:  NXDN to DMR

• May 2018 Global Digital Repeater Roundup