I'll tell you what i don't understand. iCOM has the corner on the market as far as radios with out of the box DSTAR. Why they don't encourage and/or provide repeater equipment at low cost to sell more radios is beyond me. There are companies that make sister boards for non-iCOM transceivers - or instructions for making them yourself. So existing radios could be made to work with DSTAR as well.
In my area, we have one DSTAR repeater. There are a couple clubs looking to try to get DSTAR on their repeaters with one actually having a plan and possibly test equipment in place. DSTAR is a relatively new mode. But with the possibility of crystal clear comms and the ability for people to find you in a similar manner as cell phones, it's pretty nice to have. I wish we had more of it readily available in my area. From what I've heard, some of the older HAMS don't understand it well enough, or consider it "cheating" for DX.
