Board Ramps Up Focus on EmComm Issues

It clearly states in the link that you provided, that cell phone coverage was affected. Maybe you need to read the stuff as well as post the link.

Other news reports from the day clearly stated that many or most cell phones in the affected area were not operational for many hours.

Joe

 

I am not advocating for anything other than last resort, adjunct communications. I have not advocated conjoining part 90 and part 97.

I have advocated amateur radio stepping in when all the "built out professional use part 90 systems" have failed.

As soon as some people hear the phrase "emergency communications" they freak out and start whining "whacker" "emcomm" "part90" "Waaaaa!!!!"

When a vessel at sea calls mayday on a ham band, are you going to ask them "Sir, did you exhaust all other options? Have you tried Maritime HF? Satellite phone? FAX? Marine VHF? Winmail? Flare gun? You realize, sir, that amateur radio is ONLY a last resort, and if you have other options, I'm afraid that I must refuse to assist you?" Guess what, that call and the handling of it is EMCOMM! That's right, I said the dirty word! Emergency Communications!

Not EVERYONE that supports the use of amateur radio for emergency communications is trying to take over amateur radio for nefarious purposes.

People need to take the time to see what type of emergency communications is being referred to before they immediately chastise the person and start whining about trying to turn part 97 into part 90.

 

The idea is easy. The implementation is not.

I have long advocated a 'new' radio service, operating on non-ham frequencies, such as just above or just below the two meter amateur band, for the sincere volunteers. MARS is already there, as is CAP. But so is MURS, and there is little reason a 'new' service could not be put there as well. Channelized, certificated handheld and mobile transceivers, government funded repeaters, and simple "radio operator certificates," requiring no passing of any test.

This is, in my opinion, the correct answer. Even if it were to be administered by the ARRL, it would basically be a non-ham service. No amateur license required. What could be required were courses from the ARRL, thereby not cutting them out of the financial picture, and courses from FEMA, thereby permitting certification from them, and still permitting grants.

I would like to separate the EMCOM extremists from amateur radio. Hams could still volunteer -- when needed. But we could have this cadre of trained (in emergency radio operating procedures) operators that could work with and for various agencies. This should satisfy the hard-core emergency volunteer. He would have his radio, be working with others of like mind, and actually be regimented enough in procedures to feel he was important. And in fact, he would be, supporting Part 90 systems. That is his goal anyway, as so many of these guys are wannabe cops or wannabe fire chiefs. This would be a playground they could enjoy and actually be a part of the Public Safety System, which is the real goal here.

What service? Well, for one thing, I think the present EMCOMMERS could do better by joining MARS. Get it off the ham bands. But this could be a sub-part of Part 90, to protect the future of amateur radio.

Again, I am in no way against amateurs volunteering to assist. But I believe this hard-core focus on EMCOM as "THE" mandate for ham radio is going to destroy not only the hobby, but the EMCOM part as well.

We have far too many licensed people who are NOT "hams." (By the way, that is not capitalized.) They are simply Part 90 Wannabes who hold an amateur license. They have no interest in amateur radio. Their interest lies in being an authority. When they start talking about "we dispatched ..." you can see their eyes glaze over! "We rendered assistance ..." They begin to speak the PS lingo and they lose track of who they really are. And why they are really there.

That is very destructive.

Ed

 

True.

Having worked as a Senior Network Planning Engineer for a Cellular One carrier, responsible for three Western states in the past, I know all to well the cellular/PSTN interconnection. Cellular service, in it's simplicity, is just an wireless extension of the PSTN. All cellular carriers, Local Exchange Carriers (LEC), and Inter-eXchange Carriers (IXC) buy and sell voice and data (digital) transport, routing, and termination services to/from each other. This spiderweb of intertwined or interconnected services is called the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

The point is this... cellular service will go down during times of crisis. Voice and data traffic loading on cellular and PSTN carriers' networks explodes -- calls will not go through. The reason: the trending of Busy Hour (BH) erlang calculations, used to size PSTN trunk groups, goes out the window during any "major event." Major Events are an aberration -- they do not fit trending models for network capacity sizing. Remember, cellular carriers terminate calls through IXC's to LEC's, or sometimes directly to the LEC's -- they're all intertwined and tied at the hip.

OTOH, some text and other data messaging, due to it's nature and lesser need for Class of Service or Quality of Service (QoS), will sometimes pass in a less-than-modest fashion. Recent, wide-scale "major events" have taught us this.

Just count on all cellular service crashing during major events or large-scale disasters.

73.

 

I'm with you, Ed! ... in thought and spirit.

 

So what? That's a justification for turning amateur radio into a psuedo-common carrier providing Part 90-type services to GO's and NGO's?

Bull doodoo. No one is minimizing anything! Criticizing how things were done, yes! Most assurdly, YES!

You are obviously NOT showing an ability to perform basic research and stay abreast of what amateur radio is doing to assist this nation. The state EOC in KS took out its amateur station. Want to know why? Because the National Guard came in and put in military dark-to-daylight capability for the professionals in the EOC to use. All accessible from the consoles the pro's man while on duty. If they want to talk to amateurs on the amateur bands they have the capability and the authority! They don't *need* hams.

*THAT* is the future of amateur radio in this nation.

Nonsense, eh?

From the Mecury News the day of the outage:

AT&T apparenty suffered *NO* cell phone outages. Sprint and Verizon suffered the loss of some cell sites. I can tell you why this happened but it is obvious that you aren't interested in actually learning anything on this subject.

ROFL!!! Yeah, I'm sure the authorities recommending the use of cell phones AS A FAILED SOLUTION.

NO ONE IN THE HOSPITAL HAD AN AT&T CELL PHONE?

THE HOSPITAL DID NOT HAVE A PART 90 BACKUP SYSTEM IN PLACE?

THE HOSPITAL HASN'T CONSIDERED BUYING A SATELLITE PHONE?

THE HOSPITAL HAS NOT REQUIRED THE INSTALLATION OF PHYSICALLY DIVERSE TRUNK LINES COMING INTO THE HOSPITAL -- PHYSICALLY DIVERSE ON SELF-HEALING FIBER RINGS?

You are making my point *for* me, not against me!

*Far* too many entities today have no idea of how to provide secure communications capability -- or they are too cheap to do so. "Free" comm infrastructure of amateurs seems like a dream come true -- which is exactly the argument for *NOT* offering up amateur radio as free communications infrastructure. It's exactly what the FCC discussed last year as a major threat to the amateur service.

More bull doodoo. The authorities in San Jose recommended using cell phones. I guess they *forgot* that amateur radio is *THE* only backup that should be used when landlines go down!

We have to start by educating those in our own ranks first.

Amateur radio is NOT Part 90. It should NOT be used as a replacement for Part 90!

The entire cell phone system went down no where. *Some* cell sites for Verizon and Sprint were lost -- because *they* failed to provide proper design criteria for their circuits. Your implication that the entire cell phone systems for all providers died is wrong. I've given you a quote from the Mecury News showing that what you imply is WRONG. Will you bother to read it? I have my doubts.

Dispatching hams to areas where cell sites are down in order to provide communications for the general public IS EXACTLY WHAT I DESCRIBED AS A VALID USE OF AMATEUR RADIO -- if you'll bother to actually read what I wrote.

Using amateur radio as a substitute for a Part 90 backup comm system in a hospital is not only idiotic, it is criminally negligent. The hospital is opening itself up to lawsuits from patients if it is found that the hospital based their ability to provide immediate patient services on a comm system provided by a non-bonded, non-commercial, volunteer service like the ARS. Any hospital administrator and/or hospital board attorney of record that would allow such a situation to happen would probably also be criminally and civilly liable.

When amateurs recommend to GO's and NGO's that amateur radio is a viable psuedo-common carrier capable of providing reliable, dependable communication infrastructure during a disaster they need to understand that they are putting agency employees at the officer level at risk -- whether those agency officers understand the issues or not.

I am simply amazed that there are so many amateurs that do not understand the issues associated with providing communications for agencies, both GO's and NGO's, responsible for the health and safety of the public. It really *is* whackerism at its worst. "I'm a ham and I'm here to save the day!" (sing to the Mighty Mouse tune) without a clue as to what is *really* involved in providing long-term, reliable communications infrastructure capable of actually meeting the responsibility of providing for the public health and safety. If you aren't bonded and if you can't sign a contract providing minimum criteria for staffing, repair response time, restoration time, maintenance testing, system availability (i.e. uptime), traffic capacity, etc then *I WON'T EVEN TALK TO YOU ABOUT PROVIDING BACKUP COMM INFRASTRUCTURE IF I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE* for an agency involved with public health and safety.

Are you or any of your buddies bonded? (I'm assuming you aren't a commercial vendor) Would you be willing to sign a five year contract laying out the minimum criteria I would expect from a commercial vendor providing backup comm infrastructure for my agency?

If the answer to these is NO, then why should I consider you as a viable answer for providing backup comm infrastructure for my agency via amateur radio?

tim ab0wr

 

More Bull Doodoo. Maybe *YOU* need to actually read up on what happened, Joe!

tim ab0wr

 

You've been asked this at least twice.

Why do you think Part 97 infrastructure will survive when a properly designed Part 90 system won't?

You have totally bought into the "When all else fails" canard propagated by the ARRL. It *IS* a canard. It is a *myth.

Where was the amateur infrastructure on Galveston Island after Hurricane Ike that would be used "when all else fails"? The Part 90 infrastructure survived.

If your argument is based on "when all else fails" you are neck deep in quicksand.

tim ab0wr

 

Hi Tim,

Am I, or are we, looking at the wrong reference?

Given your reference, http://www.cupertinoares.org/arc/activations/ATT-Comm-Outage-UER.pdf, cellular service was effected. If I was an official during this supposed event, I would assume ALL cellular services were unreliable and unusable. Here's the text from section three of the report's Introduction and Background:

"On Thursday 9-April-2009, Santa Clara County officials declared a local emergency after someone intentionally cut an underground fiber optic cable in south San Jose, causing a widespread phone service outage in southern Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties that included disruption to 911 emergency phone service.

The outage affected some cell phones, Internet access, and about 52,200 Verizon household land lines in Morgan Hill, Gilroy and Santa Cruz County, according to the Santa Clara County OES. The cell phone networks affected were Verizon, Nextel, Sprint and some AT&T.

Full network service was restored by 6:00am Friday 10-April-2009."

Count cell phones as out-of-service... bring in Part 90 radio systems!

 

Fer Pete's sake! Do you *honestly* believe that only hams can provide portable repeaters, portable antenna's, etc?

The state of KS has trailer mounted towers equipped with programmable repeaters, self-contained power, and over 100 handheld radios within two hours travel of anyplace in the state.

Fully functional Part 90 comm systems can be *very* portable and *very* functional and can be set up and in operation while hams are still getting out of bed!

tim ab0wr

 

Go take a look at this site: http://www.telex.com/Casestudies/CaseStudy.aspx?CaseStudyID=25&MarketID=0

I don't know what comms all these hams were handling but the 911 public service didn't need hams at all. Based on the article neither did most public agencies since they were able to talk to the dispatch center!

tim ab0wr

 

In order to do the dispatching the radio system the public agencies were using had to survive!

I'll give you a hint. Most of what you read in the newspaper about amateur operations is pure propaganda. "Manning stations" doesn't mean a single thing!

tim ab0wr

 

You TOTALLY missed the whole point. How do those ambulances get dispatched by the medical command post? If the front-line responders can't communicate with the medical command post THEY NEVER KNOW TO DISPATCH *ANYTHING*!!! They won't know where they are going because they won't be going *ANYWHERE*. They won't know how many patients to pick up because they won't know that there *are* any!

If the Part 90 systems are working in order to support the front-line responders so the medical command post will know how to dispatch THEN AMATEUR RADIO IS USELESS!

Unbelievable, simply unbelievable.

tim ab0wr

 

Did you *read* this before you posted it? How in Pete's name will the ICS and command posts KNOW *ANYTHING* if the Part 90 systems aren't working or if there aren't enough hams to shadow every first responder? The command posts have to RECEIVE a call from the field before they can dispatch!

Unbelievable, simply unbelievable. Command posts know who, what, and where to dispatch without communications with front-line responders!

tim ab0wr

 

No, it has not been proven wrong again and again. From Galveston to Greenfield, KS to Chapman, KS public Part 90 communications were on the air *LONG* before any amateur was even on site, let alone providing communications. The entire towns of Greensbug and Chapman were destroyed -- wiped out. Portable Part 90 equipment was on site in both cases within two hours.

You are participating in an argument you simply cannot win because reality is far different than what you believe it to be.

tim ab0wr