JOLIET, Ill. — Illinois School Bus is officially switching to digital two-way radio network Diga-Talk, company officials announced on Monday.

To date, 191 of the contractor’s school buses are using Diga-Talk to communicate and stay connected. Illinois School Bus is one of the 18 subsidiary school bus companies operated by Cook-Illinois Corp.

Diga-Talk is a two-way radio network solely powered by digital technology. Its network coverage spans much of Illinois, southern Wisconsin and northwest Indiana.

Diga-Talk offers subscribers private frequencies for secure and instant communication only to other programmed Diga-Talk units within an organization. Push-to-talk communication can be used to make group calls to everyone in an enterprise or private one-on-one calls when necessary.

Cook-Illinois Corp. operates 2,100 school buses in total, including Illinois School Bus. John Benish Jr., chief operating officer of Cook-Illinois, said that the company still has many analog radio systems, so he can compare them side-by-side to the Diga-Talk digital units.

“Diga-Talk is, by far, a superior system and we're very happy with it,” Benish said. “It's so clear and easy to get a hold of somebody. When you're in a school bus or you're in a situation with bad weather or some type of accident, it's really important to get those finite details and be able to hear really clearly, because sometimes those seconds make all the difference."

Diga-Talk, a wholly owned network of A Beep LLC, is powered by Nexedge NXDN digital technology and equipment distributed by JVC Kenwood USA Corp. For more information, go to www.diga-talk.com.