Quote:
Originally Posted by NN5I
No; D-Star was devised by the Japan Amateur Radio League (JARL) and is available to any manufacturer, but so far requires a proprietary chip marketed by a company from which ICOM buys it. Apparently ICOM is the only Amateur Radio supplier buying this chip, but I think I have read that some manufacturers of non-amateur equipment are using it in commercial and government services.
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Alinco uses it also. The vocoder system is a licensed system from DVSI it is used in many sound devices, sat phones, PS radios ham gear. There are open source chips out there but so far they are lagging behind. Me I'll stick with a simple FM digital if I ever venture into that mode. My thought is the vocoder system is a type of encryption that really does not fit the ideal of non-encryption in ham radio if the source was free than anyone could decode it but as it stands you have to own a radio that is capable.