In India, ham radio operators are focusing more on DMR - Digital Mobile Radio - as an alternative to analogue VHF, UHF and HF. Fifty young hams were recently given training in DMR programming and operating by the Indian Academy of Communication and Disaster Management and the West Bengal Radio Club, led by Jayanta VU2TFR and Soumya VU3FWK.

According to the club secretary, Ambarish Nag Biswas VU2JFA, this was the first hands-on training in DMR for radio operators who will be using DMR in the vast remote delta region known as the Sunderbans. Dipak Chakraborty, VU2TLW, the academy's vice principal, told the group afterward that DMR's potential in such remote areas has prompted the academy to plan yet another workshop focusing specifically on those challenged regions.

Meanwhile, in the Philippines, members of the Ham Radio Emergency Communications Group Inc., DX1HAM, devoted part of the 68th annual Jamboree on the Air scouting activities on October 18th to teach Boy Scouts of the Philippines the basics of operating two-way radios. The hams were preparing the next generation to be familiar with the kind of radios used by licensed emergency communicators when severe storms imperil public safety in their western Pacific island archipelago.