eXtreme Radio Service (eXRS) is a proprietary personal communication technology marketed by TriSquare in the United States. The radios, which are similar to other walkie-talkies, use the Part 15 low power communication 915 MHz band, and employ

frequency-hopping spread spectrum Frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) is a method of transmitting radio signals by rapidly changing the carrier frequency among many frequencies occupying a large spectral band. The changes are controlled by a code known to both transmitter ...

FM technology to attempt to address some of the perceived shortcomings of

Family Radio Service The Family Radio Service (FRS) is a walkie-talkie radio system authorized in the United States since 1996. This personal radio service uses channelized frequencies around 462 and 467 MHz in the ultra high frequency (UHF) band. It does n ...

(FRS) radios. Since the frequency in use is rapidly changed in a pattern defined by the channel number, transmissions cannot be monitored by commercially available

radio scanner A radio scanner or simply scanner is a radio receiver that can automatically tune discrete frequencies, scanning over a frequency band to find a signal until the initial transmission ceases. The term ''scanner'' generally refers to a communic ...

s. The radios hop on 50 actual frequencies from a pool of 700, giving ten billion unique frequency-hopping pattern combinations, known as channels Due to the extremely high number of available channels, users are unlikely to encounter others on the same channel, and malicious interference is unlikely unless the interferer knows the channel number being used. TriSquare claims that reliable communications can be maintained with up to 100,000 users in range of each other. This is in contrast to regular FRS or GMRS radios, which only permit 14 or 22 users to transmit simultaneously, one user per frequency, in range of each other, even with "privacy codes" or PL tones that simply prevent one user on a channel from hearing another on the same channel but do nothing to prevent interference. The range of the eXRS radios is not explicitly stated, however, the manufacturer claims that it is equal to or greater than FRS and GMRS. Since the Earth is curved, the range of two way radios at these frequencies is limited to about 6 miles in good conditions, regardless of the advertised range. By employing

digital radio Digital radio is the use of digital technology to transmit or receive across the radio spectrum. Digital transmission by radio waves includes digital broadcasting, and especially digital audio radio services. This should not be confused with In ...

modes, the TSX300 is able to send

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

-type text messages directly to other radios, identify their transmissions with a user-defined name, and clone information and channels to other radios over the air. Due to the abundance of available channels, each radio can be given a "personal channel" which allows users both to contact individual radios privately and to contact multiple users on group channels. No license is needed to operate the radios for personal or commercial use, and despite the name's similarity to the FRS allocation, the system is a proprietary design using a license free Part 15 band, rather than an official U.S.

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...

(FCC) allocated service.

Company status

On August 1, 2012, TriSquare vendor Buy Two-Way Radios posted that, "TriSquare is going out of business and its products will no longer be available." No information is provided regarding other manufacturers picking up the proprietary technology. TriSquare had been out of business for several years and no development of this technology has appeared.

References

{{Reflist Walkie-talkies