SDR is starting to be available in special applications, but for all practical purposes it's not widely available anywhere outside of the purely experimental field. For the most part, it's a can of worms whenever the discussions about it start on the boards I'm active on. The one thing that can't be duplicated by SDR (at least not with any equivalent results) are the interference and filtering tasks that actual hardware is better suited at performing. This is what slows the development of SDR in general. SDR's development is largely driven by the IT and wireless LAN portions of the computer industry who treat all wireless devices as little more than black boxes. There is a severe lack of understanding on the part of many SDR developers on how RF behaves, about interference, how to deal with co-channel users and other basic but critical topics.

I believe a lot of this has hampered it's development into being a truly viable technology for anything other than experimental uses. A truly software defined radio wouldn't be bound by emissions restrictions. Until technology makes significant advances to the point where a single portable radio can be programmed for any frequency / modulation / emission standard / air-interface, it's uses are going to be extremely limited.

There are what I refer to as 'accessory technologies' such as VOIP services (IRLP and echolink for ham) that have been a big hit in the radio world. Other advances like 900MHz ISM (frequency hopping) radios are rapidly becoming cheaper in the market and more available. I'd love to see ISM radios being used by the general public more at large events (like Burning Man, where 10,000 people on 14 channels of FRS just doesn't cut it), but the general public doesn't understand what a few dollars more would give them.


-g-