DMR

DMR stands for Digital Mobile Radio and is an international standard that has been defined for two-way radios. The DMR standard allows equipment developed by different manufacturers to operate together on the same network for all the functions defined within the standard.

The aim of the DMR standard was to create a digital radio system with low complexity and low cost that still allows for equipment from different manufacturers to work together, allowing users to shop around rather than being locked into a proprietary system which would be costly to replace and maintain.

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is responsible for the creation and maintenance of the DMR standard. The standard was first ratified in 2005 and has subsequently been updated and revised several times, most recently in November 2018.

As you can tell from the above, DMR was not developed by Amateur Radio enthusiasts, but by corporations as a solution for big business. Amateur Radio enthusiasts have however adopted DMR for (mainly) VHF and UHF communications.

As DMR units are relatively inexpensive (there are plenty of Chinese DMR radio's on the market), there are far more DMR enabled repeaters and hot spots than most other Digital Radio solutions at VHF and UHF. There is however a caveat - DMR radio isn't as plug and play as Fusion o DSTAR. There is quite a steep learining curve when programming a DMR radio with a code plug.

Some club members have mastered this black art, and so if you need to program a DMR radio, then please ask at the club.