[BigTuna]

>We WANT to know that there's a collision in transmission so that we know we need to retransmit

Digital trunked public safety systems solved this problem decades ago. If you key up when the frequency is in use you get a distinct rejected tone. I'd think prevention is far preferable to sorting it out once everyone's finished walking on each other.

[p_l]

It also means you need to replace everyones radio at the same time because everyone needs to hear everyone on the channel.

Where new additional technologies are possible, they have been applied (digital packet networks, like with CPLDC - Controller-Pilot Data Link Communications).

Replacing A3E modulated VHF radio requires you replace it for literally everyone, because there are way more users at airport than you think.

[mindcrime]

> It also means you need to replace everyones radio at the same time because everyone needs to hear everyone on the channel.

In the public safety context it's not uncommon to phase in new systems (like digital trunked systems) incrementally. You accomplish that by simulcasting the dispatch audio over both systems, and monitoring incoming audio from both systems.

A common pattern for how this plays out would be something like this: all the fire departments and ems agencies in a given jurisdiction are dispatched using two-tone (eg, motorola) paging over a VHF frequency. New digital radios are introduced, and all the fire/ems personnel keep their existing pagers, and (some|most|all) are given the new digital radios. People without the new radios can still talk to dispatch using VHF. And of course systems can be configured to mirror audio around so that if one person is transmitting on VHF they can be heard on the digital system (usually on a channel in the 800mhz or 900mhz band). It's basically a fancy version of a repeater.

Dispatches are then given out over the same old VHF channel AND the new digital channel. In theory you can eventually replace all the old pagers and radios and quit with the simulcast deal, but IME, sometimes things stay in "parallel" mode more or less indefinitely for whatever reason[1]. That said, to your original point, you typically do want to get at least radios standardized as much as possible, even if you maintain the split for (paging|operational communications).

To illustrate, two jurisdictions I'm familiar with: Orange County NC, and Brunswick County, NC. Both followed the path I talked about above: all VHF dispatch for fire/ems, then adopted the NC VIPER digital trunking system, but continue to page on VHF and simulcast the dispatch information over both channels. I'm not sure exactly when Orange County adopted VIPER but it's been quite some time and they're still doing both. FSM only knows if/when they'll ever completely abandon the old VHF system.

[1]: and that reason is often as simple as "money". Plenty of volunteer fire departments in rural areas are skating by with barely enough money to keep their apparatus road-worthy. Replacing every hand-held and mobile radio they own in one fell swoop is often out of reach.

[Source: was a firefighter and 911 dispatcher in a previous life]