Michael D Schelin wrote:
The two best forms of communications in a real disaster and one always has been is #1 Ham radio. and #2 satellite telephone. Ham radio is global and has proven time and time again to be the most reliable when the infrastructer has been damaged. The U.S government is the biggest user of satellite telephones which is also becoming a valuable tool again when the communications infrastructure is down. It would be nice If Asterisk could be used but in this case but it's useless. People are displaced and most of the communications infrastructure for the city is unusable. I don't mean all of the telco's systems. It's the flood that wiped out most home and business systems. For us, The best thing that a provider can do is to have redundant servers in different cities. This should remind us all how fragile our lives are.
While I agree with your points, I think I was thinking along different lines. Your points are useful particularly for mobile units. This is important because you have to have some form of mobile communications when you are doing disaster relief. I am not saying that my suggestion would relieve the need for Ham radio and Satellite telephone. But rather that this would allow you to do relatively quick infrastructure building to fixed locations thus freeing up Ham operators to do what they need to do-- offer mobile communications. The idea here would be that shelters, etc. could then use various line-of-site wireleass connections to set up Asterisk and that these would not have to be moved frequently. Yes, it takes more electricity, but remember what I said about strategic reserves of fuel for generators?
I was largely reacting to Mark Phillips' point about Ham radios being in short supply in any sort of disaster. The point is not to replace ham radio but rather to maximize the potential of what can be done with the existing number of operators.
Best Wishes, Chris Travers Metatron Technology Consulting
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