Many cities, counties and even entire states in the U.S. and Canada use digital public safety radio systems. A digital scanner can monitor both digital and non-digital (analog) radio communications as well as trunking radio systems. Some major cities such as Boston have no digital in use while rural areas such as upstate Michigan do and more agencies are going digital all the time. There's no way of knowing for sure without either visiting policescanners.net or giving us a call at 1-800-SCANNER to check. The U.S. national standard for public safety digital radio systems is known as APCO-25. All the scanners below are capable of monitoring APCO-25 non-encrypted Phase I digital. Note that there are a few encrypted digital systems and some non-APCO-25 digital systems which cannot be monitored on any scanner. All digital scanners are state-of-the-art and are a challenge to program (except for the PSR-800 and HomePatrol pre-programmed scanners) but when programmed properly are fantastic to use. Scanner Master offers a programming service. See details on each radio for more information.
