What is Trunked Mobile Communication

Trunked mobile communication is a relatively economical and flexible mobile communication system developed in the 1970s, representing an advanced stage of the traditional private radio dispatch network. Traditional private radio dispatch systems suffer from poor overall planning, mixed models and standards, numerous small networks with many base stations, limited coverage, severe noise interference, and waste of frequency resources. Therefore, a new radio dispatch technology—trunked mobile communication—emerged as the times required. The communication industry both domestically and internationally generally recognizes that the 1980s-1990s were the decade when trunked mobile communication occupied a significant share in private radio communications, advancing in parallel with cellular mobile communication as an advanced communication system. The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, the four Nordic countries, Canada, and Australia all extensively developed and utilized this system. It later experienced a period of decline. In recent years, trunked mobile communication systems have seen a resurgence.

The so-called trunking refers to the use of multiple wireless channels to serve numerous users, that is, applying the working mode of wired telephone trunk lines to radio communication systems, dynamically, automatically, rapidly, and optimally allocating the limited channels to all users of the entire system, so as to maximize the utilization of the channel frequency resources of the whole system. It employs switching technology and computer technology to provide all users of the system with strong grouping capabilities. It can be said that a trunked mobile communication system is a special user program-controlled switch.

The first city in China to introduce trunked mobile communication systems was Shanghai. Trunked mobile communication is well suited to various professional sectors, such as the military, public security, firefighting, transportation, flood control, electric power, railways, and finance, for group dispatch use. Subsequently, Beijing, Tianjin, Guangdong, Shenyang, and other places successively developed trunked mobile communication services. With the development of local economies, some provincial capitals, municipalities directly under the central government, and qualified cities have gradually established 800MHz wireless trunked mobile communication systems and gradually opened up 800MHz trunked mobile communication services. Some local and non-telecom departments have also launched such services one after another.

According to incomplete statistics, there are 198 trunked mobile communication systems in operation in the 450MHz and 800MHz frequency bands in China, the vast majority of which are owned by non-telecom entities. During the "Ninth Five-Year Plan" period, the number of handheld terminals required for the trunked networks planned by various departments alone is expected to reach 200,000 units. For example, three entities including the flood control department of Henan Province invested 500-600 million yuan to establish a wireless paging network and a trunked communication network across the province. Several major oil fields, large enterprises, and agricultural reclamation departments in China also plan to expand or build their trunked communication networks. It is evident that the development prospects for trunked mobile communication in China are very broad. At present, most trunked communication systems in China are imported from abroad as complete units, with numerous brands and models. Leading products include those from Motorola (USA), UNIDEN (USA), Nokia (Finland), as well as products from Hong Kong's Taihe and from Europe and Japan.

Trunked mobile communication systems designed and manufactured domestically in China have also been put into operation in recent years. Relevant parties believe that there is an urgent need to select optimal models, unify equipment types, introduce sample units for analysis and assimilation, cooperate with foreign companies to develop software and mobile stations, first achieve breakthroughs in the high-volume mobile station and software technologies, then gradually realize the localization of base stations and switching control systems, raise the development starting point, and quickly form economies of scale. It is reported that relevant parties plan to form a group company to accelerate the development of trunked mobile communication systems in China.