With more infomation provided the intent of this post is MUCH more clear. I can definatly see the appeal and usefulness.
That said I am amazed that any critical services are using civilian communications infrastructure. Up here in the Inland NW there have been quite a few times in my life during extreme weather that the cell networks are overloaded and don't work (this is one major reason we have both county and city emergency radio groups). I know all of our government and such up here uses trunked and encripted digital radio as well as limited analogue just above the Ham 2meter band with PL tones on the send and receive.
Almost all critical services use civilian communications. My agency used Verizon for our computers, LAPD uses T-Mobile, the list goes on. Twenty five years ago agencies used separate radio networks for their computers and it was hugely expensive and range limiting. For instance, when my agency made an arrest we had to transport our arrestee to our downtown jail for long term housing. During that drive we would actually go outside our radio systems coverage. We had to rely on a cell phone at that point. Once the computers came along, using 3G edge networks at that time, we could at least communicate with our station via the computer. Around 2015 we started experimenting with Zello for our detectives because their investigations frequently took them long distances away. The Zello app wasn't as reliable back then, but it worked better than nothing. Over the years it improved until it was really reliable.
There is a project right now to build out a separate LTE system for government use called First Net. AT&T got the contract for it but at this point it's really just running on the AT&T network. In some areas it works well and in others, not so much. The people that run First Net are actually in the process of trying to develop their own Mission Critical PTT app because they see that it the way forward in the future. AMR ambulance is a huge company that has contracts all across the United States. They use a different company called ESChat. ESChat is a PTT over LTE company just like Zello. The only real difference is Zello has a free version that private citizens can use. AMR ambulance found it was a huge pain an expense to build out an entire radio system every time they got a new contract, so they adopted ESChat and have been using it for several years now. They do still use land mobile radio in a few locations that don't have good coverage, but 90 percent of their operations are now on EXChat via LTE.
From the beginning of this post I wasn't trying to tell anyone that this app should replace any kind of radio for off road use. Obviously, if you live in a place with poor LTE coverage then you probably don't rely on a cellphone either. But in the vast majority of the United States their is now coverage. I keep seeing remarks about the coverage not being complete and I get it. If it doesn't work for you then don't use it. But for most of us we do have coverage when on the highways and around town, so why would we not avail ourselves of a free resource?
When I retired I started doing more hiking and backpacking. Being an old radio guy I looked for ways to incorporate communications into what I was doing. Pretty much all of my hiking partners have a GMRS radio and we use them on the trail because sometime, on a multi-day trip, we get stretched out for over a mile. I recently backpacked into the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Our younger people ended up being far out ahead of us older and slower guys, but we always had a radio between us in case someone got hurt. On the drive from California to the Grand Canyon we used Zello to coordinate and eventually meet up in a city about fifty miles from our destination. The combination of Zello for the road and the GMRS radios on the trail worked amazingly well.
All I'm saying is, check it out and see if it might work for you. If it doesn't, just delete the app and you will have lost nothing.
