Please see below... Walt/K5YFW
-----Original Message-----
From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of jgorman01
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2006 9:36 PM
To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [digitalradio] Re: USA: No Advanced Digital HF Data Comms
Your argument isn't logical.
Right, its political. IMHO the FCC has become a political agency
rather than
a regulatory agency. As you may be aware, there is a big frap in the
FCC now
concerning voting on the AT&T Southern Bell merger. This is political
NOT
technical or regulatory.
If the NGO's don't have the resources to use the frequencies they
currently have assigned, where would the resources come from to allow
them to use amateur service frequencies reassigned to the land
fixed/mobile service? How would they convince the FCC to allocate and
assign new frequencies when they aren't using the ones they have?
Its not a resource problem, it is a problem that being basically in the
LMRS their assigned "channels" will not permit they type of modulation
that
is/would be required for high speed, robust data transmissions.
Money is not really a problem, and of course if they are on NGO assigned
frequencies, no radio operator's license is needed.
The FCC may not have a choice to assign new frequencies or even create a
new type of service...Congress may pass a Public Law establishing it.
Of the
FCC might create a new type of service or sub-service as they have done
in the
past.
The ITU controls the segments assigned to different services. For
example, 3750 - 4000 kHz in Region 2 can be amateur, land, or
aeronautical. The FCC just can't create a new "service" for this
segment without agreement of the signatories of the ITU. Therefore,
these frequencies would have to be assigned within the land
fixed/mobile service and end up with the same restriction that their
current assignments have.
If 3750-4000 can be used for land services, then the FCC could establish
a sub-class or new land mobile radio class here for disaster
communications.
The FCC just recently did away with a sub-class with they effectively
did
away with RACES. You might have a Radio Amateur Disaster
Communications Service
with assigned frequencies in the ham bands and these frequencies might
be
only used exclusively by NGOs during disasters with the modes needed
and
operated by "certified" amateur radio operators or even non-amateur
radio
persons who were "certified". This was done during WWII.
Lastly, I just can't understand where so much data is going to come
from in a disaster that the FCC could justify moving HF amateur
allocations to land fixed/mobile. Amateur radio should not be the
primary service that handles megabytes/gigabytes of data on a
continuous basis for logistics, etc. for NGO's or the government.
This is close to the line of using amateur radio as a full blown
communications carrier. If amateurs involved with emcomms are
"selling" this to NGO's and the government they are doing so without
consulting with all the other amateur service licensees that share
these frequencies and getting their agreement.
If you worked in a NGO Incident Command Post for the Red Cross,
Salvation
Army, Baptist Disaster Relief for FEMA Incident Command Post, you
would know just how much information is needed to run these facilities
so that they can meet the collective needs of the disaster area. Part
of
the problem we saw in Katrina and Rita, and now looking back at other
disaster events, we see that even in them they could have run better,
more
effectively and met the collective needs of those in the disaster area
had
information flow been large and faster.
No one is selling the NGOs anything, they are NOT communications
ignorant.
But one thing for sure, even though we have a large number of amateur
radio
operators volunteering for disaster communications, the number is less
than
15% of the number needed.
Walt/K5YFW
Jim
WA0LYK
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, "DuBose Walt Civ AETC CONS/LGCA"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Red Cross, Salvation Army and the like frequencies are just
commercial frequencies requiring the same bandwidth as other users of
the frequencies...they have no special frequencies.
>
> However, I would think that DHS would approach the FCC about setting
aside disaster communications frequencies that don't reside within the
commercial frequencies. What is unfortunate is that the ITU really
controls the bandwidth of the frequencies on HF world wide so there is
not really any or many available frequencies on HF that can be used
for wideband use EXCEPT the hambands. Even our military frequencies
that we in the U.S. (Region II) cannot be used in other parts of the
world.
>
> The clostest thing we have to a disaster frequency is the 5 MHz
frequency that is used in Alaska. When you consider the actual needs
of frequencies set aside for disaster communications, there just isn't
enough bandwidth available...what IS available is amateur radio
frequencies.
>
> I fear that if amateur radio operators in the U.S. don't accommodate
NGO HF communications needs...and choose to give the NGOs their own
disaster frequencies, those frequencies will come out of the hambands.
It may be a case of play with the NGOs and meet their "sometime"
communications needs or lose frequencies to them altogether.
>
> Walt/K5YFW
>
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