Matt, Since its inception, the "Internet" has never gone down. There are places where access has been unavailable, but the Internet has never gone down. Except for the last mile, most Internet connections are highly redundant. In the middle of Katrina, in the middle of the biggest California Earthquakes, the Internet has been available.
But that's not to say that the Internet will always be available at all locations. D-STAR is primarily another tool in the tool belt. At its best, it provides capabilities that haven't been readily available. If it loses the Internet connection, it can still act as a repeater, it can still send data, and it can still relay position reports. But the most important thing to remember is that never every emergency consists of the world blowing up. So there are many times when the infrastructure can be expected to operate quite well. Localized flooding, large fires, lost persons, are all situations in which things should continue to work. Professional Disaster Planners don't plan on everything not working, they look at probabilities and possibilities. The probability that any event will take out every repeater in an area is relatively low (assuming a decent number of repeaters cover an area). So they would expect that there is a high probability that some repeater communications will always be there. D-STAR doesn't replace any technologies, it only gives us a better opportunity to solve problems. Ed WA4YIH
