And, let's ask the people in Colorado who are dealing with the current 
flooding situation how reliable cell phones and internet communications have 
been?

Remember the article that a list member distributed last week regarding 
amateur radio's response to the flooding situation, and I think you'll know 
what I mean.

Tom Behler: KB8TYJ

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Martin G. McCormick" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2013 9:57 AM
Subject: Re: DStar and other Internet based modes


> Good question but let's ask, When was the last time the internet
> died where you happened to be?
>
> The trouble with disasters is they tend to bite where
> you didn't expect. During Hurricane Katrina on a large scale or
> the Oklahoma City or the World Trade Center terrorism events,
> the first thing to go away was the cellular network.
>
> In Oklahoma City, the cellular network wasn't damaged by
> the bombing but it crashed right around the site of the disaster
> due to severe overload.
>
> In New York City, there was some infrastructure lost,
> but, once again, severe overload took out cellular access right
> where it was needed most.
>
> In New Orleans, the water took out lots of cell towers
> and killed electric power over a large area so that other cell
> towers eventually died when their backup generators ran out of
> fuel and nobody could get to them to bring more.
>
> Basically, if it involves wires and more wires to power
> the stuff connected by the first set of wires, anything that
> eats wiring infrastructure is a sitting duck for the forces of
> entropy.
>
> I work for Oklahoma State University and we have a large
> campus and a good data network but, as luck would have it, there
> is a lot of construction going on and contractors have cut power
> to major parts of the campus twice in as many weeks.
>
> Here's what happens:
>
> The lights and fans go out and we all swear as whatever
> we were doing at the time goes POOF! If you have a wireless
> device, it continues to work for a few minutes until the UPS's
> begin to run out of batteries. As time goes by, more and more
> wireless access points and switches die because the bigger UPS's
> pass their battery time. They are built to provide power durring
> a short outage or flicker, but the big stuff starts dying in an
> hour or two or even 30 minutes or so.
>
> In a couple of hours, it's done and nothing is working
> much.
>
> My point is that amateur radio can get by on less
> infrastructure and much more varied infrastructure than any of
> the fixed installations anywhere.
>
> The millitary is probably the only other organization
> with communications capability that does not rely on commercial
> infrastructure.
>
> 73 WB5AGZ