Is Motorola exiting analogue?

The answer is simple: No.

The recent announcements that Motorola will be discontinuing the extremely popular Professional and Commercial Series analogue radios has raised a few questions as to Motorola's strategy regarding analogue. It is true that in a few months, Motorola will only be producing one licensed* analogue only portable radio model range but almost all** the current MOTOTRBO models are able to operate in analogue mode.

Even if customers have no plans to migrate to digital, they can still use their MOTOTRBO radios, in analogue mode and enjoy all the benefits a Motorola radio brings. Customers who may be considering digital in the future can continue to use their MOTOTRBO and legacy analogue radios and can make the switch to digital at some date in the future.

Using features like Dynamic Mixed Mode and Dual Capacity Direct Mode, customers with mixed fleets of radios can enjoy the enhanced capabilities of MOTOTRBO while still using their legacy analogue radios on the same channel at the same time***.

Apart from that, Motorola's Astro product portfolio supports analogue operation and it is possible to link a Dimetra system into an analogue channel. MOTOTRBO radios are also able to operate on MPT1327 and SmartZone systems.

* Licensed means a radio which does not operate in the licence free 446MHz band. Motorola produces a range of consumer and business radios which operate in this band and hence do not require a radio licence.

** Only the SL4000 series does not support analogue operation - all other MOTOTRBO radios do.

*** IP Site Connect; Capacity Plus and Linked Capacity Plus operation are not supported in analogue mode. A call in digital mode will not be audible to analogue users who are on the same frequency. A cross patch system can be used to link an analogue channel to a digital one.