I don't speak for the original poster and his area, of course. Here in the SF Bay Area, D-Star is less useful for two reasons. We're in the range of Air Force over the horizon radar operating in 70cm, so our use of that band has been greatly limited. Repeaters have been required to operate at lower power, so the use of D-Star on 70cm is limited. Worse, our number of 2M and 70cm repeaters is so great, the addition of new ones on those bands is being resisted, and coordinators are having problems fitting in repeater band-pairs in 2M and 70cm due to crowding and the objections of existing repeater owners.