Industrial/Business radio systems serve a great variety of communications needs. Organizations use their radio systems as a tool to support their business operations, safety and emergency needs. The most common implementation of these radio systems are handheld portable devices. A business hand radio has a typical range from 1-50 miles depending on the type of radio, output power, and the environment with the most common communications range of 1-5 miles.
There are a variety of situations where it would be desirable for organizations to equip workers with lower power business band radios for communications in a smaller local area, but to also occasionally connect those same users to individuals who are not within the local operating range—potentially thousands of miles away.
For example, a construction site may have workers using business band radio communications devices to communicate with each other. These devices are typically rugged and meant for use in a limited geographic area, usually to facilitate communication at a single field site. A smaller subset of the workers on the field site, however, may also carry a wireless communication device such as a cellular telephone that is equipped to engage in “push to talk” or similar wide area network dispatch communications. Such wide area network communication devices allow remote supervisors, suppliers, and others to communicate to a field site, but unfortunately only to workers on the site who are equipped with a compatible device. For many applications, and especially in urgent situations, it would be valuable to be able to communicate readily between a distant location and any worker at a field site who is equipped with only a business band handset.