Several different competing digital radio standards are out there today. Creating a scanner that will recognize and decode all would require a rather complex design. I suspect that scanner manufacturers are waiting to see which standards become common and then design for those. However the railroad industry will probably use a common industry-wide standard to allow easy interchange of equipment. But if the railroad standard is not the same as commonly used by fire and police, we're not likely to see scanners since the market is too small.

A potential problem with future digital scanners is that some digital systems encrypt the data or voice being transmitted. Motorola is selling one of these. Federal law prohibits selling devices that will decode encrypted data.