[24497] in North American Network Operators' Group
Ham radio & Major Outages (Was: Re: 911 doesn't work, try a FAX)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (George Herbert)
Mon Jul 5 14:29:05 1999
To: John Fraizer <John.Fraizer@enterzone.net>
Cc: Joe Shaw <jshaw@insync.net>, Sean Donelan <SEAN@sdg.dra.com>,
nanog@merit.edu, gherbert@crl.com
Date: Mon, 05 Jul 1999 11:21:31 -0700
From: George Herbert <gherbert@crl.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
John Fraizer <John.Fraizer@EnterZone.Net> writes:
>Joe Shaw wrote:
>>This is why HAM radios and the appropriate licenses can come in very
>>handy, especially in cases of emergency or natural disaster. Does anyone
>>in the business use RF for backup communications?
>
>You mean we're not ALL licensed amateurs? ;-)
While it's a useful thing for people to have, keep in mind that
amateur radio has significant limitations. While you're allowed
to do more or less anything you have to during an emergency situation
with lives at stake, supporting your commercial activities using
ham bands is a no-no, even in a widescale "emergency/outage" situation...
If anyone wants tactical comms for your company during a complete telco
outage, then get some commercial radio sets and a frequency allocation.
It's relatively painless. The new cellphones that have direct phone-to-phone
capabilities *may* stay up if their cell service goes down, but I don't
know the mechanism in detail so check with your resident expert.
Using "CB" bands and walkie-talkies may work, if they don't get
innundated with other people trying to do the same thing.
-george william herbert
gherbert@crl.com KD6WUQ
