On 24/02/2015 12:47, gareth wrote:
What is the point of digital voice when there are already AM, SSB
and FM for those who want to appear indistinguishable from CBers?

Perhaps it is cynicism from the manufacturers who introduce such things
as they see their traditional highly-priced corner of the market
being wiped away by SDR technologies?

Bandwidth reduction for one.
If you can encode and compress speech sufficiently then you can use
less bandwidth in transmission.

Clarity. With duplex transmission it is possible to transmit clear
speech over a noisy channel assuming you use an error correcting and
retransmission protocol, self correcting codes techniques etc.

Band sharing. Multiple users can transmit on the same band assuming
adequate time-slicing and collision detection and traffic handling.

or just for the fun of doing it.

Andy