Police Scanner | Scanner Radio | Radio Scanners

Radio Goes Digital

Like everything else these days, radio communications are going digital. Gone are the days when a basic, entry-level scanner radio is sure to be able to monitor all the radio traffic just about anywhere in the U.S.A.

If you are a scanner listener who happens to monitor an agency that has switched to digital signals, you will know how it goes. One day you start hearing strange signals from your scanner. Where there were once voices that were easily understood there are now weird sounds that might sound like a combination of static and a lawn mower engine coming from your scanner!

Welcome to the world of digital radio. Just like cell phones in recent years, radio communications that have been traditionally monitored by scanner users are starting to go digital. Digital signals can make more efficient use of available frequencies which are more and more in demand with new technology like wireless internet competing for frequencies to use.

I remember well the days of analog cell phone signals. Back in the 1980's when cell phones were just starting to be used in the U.S., all the signals were analog and were all in the 800 MHz frequency band. This was a recipe for very easy listening for those that had scanners capable of receiving frequencies in that area. If you were using a cell phone back in those days, it was very possible that your conversations were overhears by scanner listeners.

Around that same time, cordless phones were assigned to the 46 and 49 MHz frequencies and were also very easy to monitor. With a good outside antenna, it was often possible to monitor cordless phone conversations a mile or more away! Some of the conversations that were overheard back in those days were something you might expect from a soap opera!

These days you need to be a very heavy-duty radio geek if you want to monitor telephone conversations. I suspect that some very special and expensive equipment would be required to hear most cell phone transmissions. Not to mention the time to figure it all out and set it up to decode the digital signals that are present on just about all cellular telephone networks today.

Although you can forget about listening to cell phone conversations unless you have lots of time to waste and lots of money to spend on equipment, the same is not true for most of the digital signals that are of interest to scanner listeners.

Once again, the scanner manufacturers have kept pace with the trends in communications technology and digital scanners are available that can monitor these signals. These new scanners are, however, quite a bit more expensive than their analog predecessors.

If you are planning to purchase a new scanner to monitor digital signals in your area, make sure you find out exactly what kind of system is being used. You need to know if the digital-capable scanner you intend to purchase can decode the type of digital signal that is being used in your area.

Sometimes just listening to whatever radio communications you can still here in the old analog mode will give you a clue to the type of digital system in use. For example, the police in my area have digital-capable radios but often still use the analog mode due to interference with the digital mode. They will sometimes talk about switching to "Astro" which tells me that they are using Motorola Astro radios which use APCO-25 digital signals and are easily monitored with a number of digital-capable scanners available today.