Tait gear approved for use on GRN

[centralcoastscanman]

Scotty,

I'm no expert on the topic but i do know a fair bit.

I believe Tait has been pushing to try and enter the grn arena for a while to give Motorola some healthy competition but could not provide a radio that would meet the grn requirements, from a cost point of view when i was working for a govt agency trying to convince my boss to spend $3k on a XTS5K was damn near impossible as he could not get his head around why a Moto GP328 could not do the same thing.

I believe Tait will give agencies with limited budgets a cheaper option to get onto the GRN, and i'd much prefer a tait radio compared to the Benelec radios that were grn compliant a couple of years ago.
I hope as well it might make motorola wake up and realise they are charging too much, as if motorola want to have a theoretical monopoly on radios for the grn they need to price them at a level where all agencies even the ones that claim to not have any money can afford them.

[ivahri]

What's the compatibility like between the Tait's and Motorola's? Is one brand able to direct call another brand?

I would think the Tait’s would mostly be used by smaller agencies, if for no other reason than it would probably be easier for users to operate/service/program/purchase accessories etc for only one brandof radio, and all the larger users are well and truly covered by the big M.

Scotty,

Absolutely! There have been a number of APCO and industry compatability tests done involving a number of manufacturers. Tait was one of them.

You make a very good point & I think that is going to be Tait's biggest obstacle to making inroads on Moto's market share. With most agencies having relatively young radios introducing another brand in to a large fleet can cause training problems, not just spares & service. Smaller agencies are the ones that will benefit from having the competition.

Cheers,


Richard

[Scotty]

Good to hear that there is compatibility, I wasn't sure if direct calling etc was part of the APCO standard or a Motorola 'thing'.

Market share - that was the term I was looking for! I don't know what the service life is for a Motorola GRN radio, but at a guess I would maybe say around 10 years? If that's the case it will be many years before the larger agencies look at replacing large parts of their fleets. Certainly good for smaller agencies, and competition can only be a good thing.

[Longreach]

ut out the BS about "monopoly", this is a P25 OPEN standard, but that doesn't mean that every Joe Bloggs that produces a radio should be allowed to market radios without appropriate security safeguards.

I think youve completely misread what im trying to say.

Im aware that P25 is an open standard and it seems more and more manufacturers are getting into the market, even the chinese.
The point i was tying to make was im glad to see there is a choice now for users of the GRN to use another supplier and Motorola NOT to have the monopoly. your right while the big M make good radios i agree that they charge way too much for them. they are a great radio but yeah the cost is a bit OTT.
personally i'd like to see more be allowed to the system if they pass scrutiny.
cheers
Matt

[ivahri]

Sorry Matt, I didn't mean it to come out the way I wrote it. I just wanted to make the point that competition is great but only if all vendors meet the needs of the network users, in particular security. You can imagine some small radio users wouldn't care less about this, only the price matters. But it is a big deal to the larger users who see this as an open door for the dodgy to sell radios that bypass security measures. The assumption being made by some I think is that all vendors want to sell radios on to these large networks- I don't think that is true. I can think of 4, 2 have met the security requirements already, 1 was close, another I think has the ability but hasn't shown interest. The Chinese are very, very unlikely to ever produce something that comes within coo-ee of meeting the requirements.

Cheers,

Richard

[ivahri]

I agree Scotty.

Another thing people need to remember is that the price you or I privately would pay for a Moto radio is not what government pays. Moto has always offered huge "price breaks" for quantity buys. NSW government get huge discounts by buying in bulk- Moto can do this because it is large enough to sell radios at cost here and make profits elsewhere. Many manufacturers cannot or will not do that- and they miss out. Business is business...

And having played with the APX series radios I think it will take a minor miracle for these radios not to pick up most of the business in the future. I've never used a better radio...

Cheers,

Richard

[Longreach]

Would Icom been on that list?
cheers
Matt

[ivahri]

No

[centralcoastscanman]

Richard,

are benelec still selling grn compliant radios or have they been taken off the list ?

[ivahri]

To my knowledge no... the company that they distributed was purchased by Moto long before NSW switched to P25. The only two approved vendors currently are Moto & Tait.

Cheers,

Richard