Walkie talkie channel planning: how many do you need?
By Jolene Wong
Plan channels around your teams, not the number on the box: what one licensed frequency gives you, group calls, and shared licence-free channels.
Buyers often ask for a radio with more channels. The number on the box is how many channels the radio can store, not how many your site can use. What you can use depends on your frequencies, and the plan depends on your teams.
Start from the teams, not the radio
- List every team that carries a radio. In a hotel that is often housekeeping, F&B, front office, engineering and security.
- For each team, write down who they must reach. Most talk stays inside the team. Some people, such as the duty manager or the control room, must hear more than one team.
- Mark the moments when everyone must hear the same message, such as an evacuation.
- Count how many teams talk at the same time on a busy day. That number matters more than the total number of teams.
What one licensed frequency gives you
Licences are per frequency. On a digital radio, one frequency gives you two channels. Motorola says its DMR radios give twice the calling capacity of analogue for one frequency licence.
Every extra frequency is licensed and billed again, so plan before you apply. The licence guide shows the fees per frequency.
Group calls before more channels
Digital radios can call a group, one person, or everyone. The TDMR DR6 Plus, for example, has private, group and all call. So two small teams can sometimes share a channel and still keep their talk apart, which can save a frequency.
On a large site with many busy teams, a repeater that supports trunking lets talk groups share a pool of channels instead of each team holding its own. The SLR 5300 repeater supports Capacity Plus and Linked Capacity Plus. Whether you need that is a question for the site test, not the brochure.
Licence-free channels are shared
Certified radios at up to 0.5 W on the 446 MHz channels MCMC lists need no licence. Those channels are not given to you alone, so other people nearby on the same channel may hear you, and you may hear them. Keep that in mind for an event in a busy area.
Channels a radio can store
| Radio | Channels it can store |
|---|---|
| MOTOTRBO R5 | 256 (LKP), 64 (NKP) |
| MOTOTRBO R7 | 1000 (FKP), 64 (NKP) |
| Hytera S1 Pro | 256 |
| TDMR DR6 Plus | 128 |
| TDMR DR5 | 16 |
A radio with no keypad, such as the MOTOTRBO R5 NKP, suits staff who should not change channel by accident. Store only the channels each team needs.
Send me your team list and how busy each team is, and I will draft the channel plan with you before anything is programmed.
