MPT 1327 is an industry standard for trunked radio communications networks.
First published in January 1988 by the British Radiocommunications Agency, and is primarily used in the United Kingdom, Europe, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and even China. Many countries had their own version of numbering/user interface, including MPT1343 in the UK, Chekker (Regionet 43) in Germany, 3RP (CNET2424) in France, Multiax in Australia, and Gong An in China.
MPT systems are still being built in many areas of the world, due to their cost-effectiveness.
The TETRA trunked radio standard was developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), as a digital alternative to analogue trunked systems. However, TETRA, with its enhanced encryption capability, has developed into a higher tier (public safety) product, currently mainly used by governments, some larger airports and government-owned utilities.
DMR (digital mobile radio), and dPMR (digital private mobile radio) are more recent ETSI-standards for digital mobile radio using two-slot TDMA and FDMA respectively. The Tier 3 standard for these systems defines a trunking protocol very similar to MPT1327 and is intended as a potential migration path for existing and perhaps future trunking customers. Tier 3 equipment is (late 2011) now becoming available, so the impact on TETRA and MPT 1327 is yet to be seen, but may well be significant. However, it is unlikely that in terms of cost that the complicated new DMR/dPMR equipment will be able to compete with the simpler MPT1327 equipment for some time, if ever.
It is worth noting that whilst many comparisons are made between Digital and Analog radio technologies, when it comes to applying these arguments to MPT1327, many of the distinctions become blurred, since MPT1327 with its digital control channel, already offers most of the features being offered by the DMR/dPMR/TETRA counterparts.