DMR-MARC and DMRPlus to share United States and Canadian regional talkgroups

Don Trynor, VA3XFT November 18, 2016 DMR-MARC, DMR, DMRPlus, News, Repeaters

The DMR-MARC team made an important announcement today regarding the sharing of talkgroups with the DMRPlus network, which was initially announced on August 7, 2016. The details of this announcement can be found below.

DON’T MISS: DMR-MARC announces deal with the DMRPlus network for DV4mini support

“Dear DMR-MARC users,

As a follow-up to our announcement in August 2016 regarding our partnership with the DMRPlus network, we have some more exciting news to share with you regarding our collaboration with the DMRPlus team.

Firstly, our testing of the new DMRPlus interconnection talkgroups, which include DMR USA (TG133), DMR UK (TG143) and DMRPlus South Pacific (TG153) has been very successful and we have decided to roll these talkgroups out to all repeaters connected to our network. We have also added DMRPlus Quebec – French (TG131), and DMRPlus Latin America – Spanish (TG134). This will allow any device connected to the DMRPlus network, including commercial Motorola or Hytera repeaters, homebrew MMDVM repeaters or base stations, the upcoming DV4mobile and DV4mini users worldwide to access users on either the DMRPlus or DMR-MARC networks. The rollout has already started and will be completed over the next few weeks.

Secondly, we have decided to allow all of our US regional talkgroups (TG3169, TG317x), and Canadian provincial talkgroups (TG302x) to be interconnected with the DMRPlus network as well. By combining the stable and robust nature of DMR-MARC network with the flexibility and experimental nature of the DMRPlus network, we hope to create a combined global DMR network that suits the needs of all ham DMR users.

With regard to the traditional DMR-MARC talkgroups, we have heard numerous concerns expressed by our users around the potential impact of experimental devices on these talkgroups, so accordingly these talkgroups will remain exclusive to the DMR-MARC network for the time being. These talkgroups include:

Worldwide (TG1)
Europe (TG2)
North America (TG3)
Oceania (TG5)
Worldwide German (TG10)
Worldwide French (TG11)
Worldwide English (TG13)
Worldwide Spanish (TG14)

We believe that by providing a two tier approach to talkgroups with some designated as robust and reliable, while others open to experimentation and feature development, we can provide our users with the best possible DMR experience.

In addition, we would like to thank all of our loyal users for their generous contributions to our network over the last seven years. Many of you have invested time, hardware, and financial resources to our network, which has helped us to build the world’s largest DMR network consisting of over 500 repeaters in 60 countries that is used by over 10,000 hams every day. Most importantly, your efforts have helped to change the face of ham radio digital communications forever and we hope the hobby is all the better for it.

Again, we appreciate all of your support and look forward to making DMR great for the benefit of the entire ham radio community.

The DMR-MARC Administrative Team”

For anyone that is interested in getting connected to either DMR-MARC or DMRPLus North American networks, below is a comparison between the two that can help users decide which network is best for them.