Two Way Radios

Some of you might be thinking “bah, who needs two way radios, we’ve got cell phones now and they work everywhere”. The answer to that depends on numerous factors.

One of those factors is your definition of “everywhere”. If you constrain yourself to the urban areas in which we have grown accustomed to be living, then you might have a point since cell phone coverage is excellent there due to the high population density. However, countless activities take place in areas where cell phone network coverage can only be dreamt of. This can either be an underground site or simply an extremely remote area. Two way radios don’t need a base station to function, so they don’t experience this kind of problem.

A situation where two way radios are the clear winner, is when you want to broadcast a message to many receivers simultaneously. Using a cell phone, this would mean calling each one of them seperately. Finding the number, dialing, waiting for a connection, and finally talking, after the customary idle chatter, can be very time consuming. In emergencies, this is definitely not acceptable. With a two way radio, you simply press a button, speak, and your message instantly reaches its recipients.

Additionally, two way radios can connect with accessory products that cell phones can’t. You can set up wireless public address systems that can receive broadcasts from two-way radios. So no matter where you are you can make an announcement. You can also set up customer assist call boxes throughout your store that customers can use to contact you wirelessly. There are wireless outdoor call boxes that can communicate with two-way radios so you can put these devices wherever emergency assistance may be needed.

Two way radios are also great for use in emergencies for many reasons. Firstly, they continue working in natural disasters or even blizzards. Even if cell phones do work, the cell phone base stations are usually overloaded with everyone trying to make calls so your call will, in all probability, not go through. Furthermore, many two-way radios are built to military standards, which means they will work in wet environments and endure very hard shocks. Most cell phones, on the contrary, are rather delicate devices. Moreover, some two way radios can pick up weather alerts, meaning that you will be instantly notified if bad weather is approaching in order to take appropriate action. Last but definitely not least, the Emergency Call or “man down” feature enables the radio user to immediately notify all other radios on the same channel. For example, if the radio user should be injured, trapped or is in any kind of danger, a simple push of a button will call everyone and the microphone on the radio is automatically activated for a brief period so the user can shout out a message. The user may not be able to even dial a phone number on a cell phone.

This last fact was initially intended as a joke, but come to think of it, it’s actually not so negligible: there is no monthly contract with two-way radios. You never have to worry about exceeding your minutes with a two-way radio like you do with a cell phone.

Now you might have some clues as to why, in some cases at least, a two way radio is the better choice in terms of communication. At least those of you who had the courage to read the whole article!