Marty Albert wrote:

I am curious as to what people attribute the (apparent) death of digital
systems overall.

I, of course, have my own ideas that have, by the way, not changed for more
than a decade.

So, what say you about the life of digital services?

The death of the digital modes is directly attributible to the fact that
the protocol is 20 years old and has throughput equal to the speed of an
old lady sitting in a motorized wheelchair trying to check-out her
groceries in the express isle.

TAPR had a great spread-spectrum board, but the project died a death due
to a thousand cuts of various sorts. Until amateur radio gets a similar
project that makes speeds 384 kbps and in a form that makes it easy
for appliance operators to plug-n-play, packet is all we have.

I'm surprised the ARRL hasn't sponsored a project. Kids playing with
802.11 are having far more success in building networks that amateur
radio operators.