Thanks for all the replies. I wanted to bring this up and see what ya'll think of it.
I had someone send me an email directly regarding this and I wanted to further the question that was presented from it. I do not wish to include the email or name, as I wish to just make this a new question on this same subject and see what everyone has to say. The goal is (or was) to develop a paging system that would be included on our repeater system once it's operational. Though during most of the time, the repeater would be available to the general amateur radio users, it will be owned and operated by our ARES program and during times of emergency would become a ARES operational repeater only, meaning emergency traffic only. Th purpose of the pager system is that we wish to provide both our ARES members, some older with no cellphone or on limited funds, or might not have a mobile rig, but work from a base station and to provide our CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) program also with pagers for call outs, as they 1. might be the same people, or 2 have no need for a regular amateur radio as they might not have their license. Though we are asking them to get one if they can. This would allow them to receive the callout, but we would not have to worry about them illegally broadcasting on the frequency. The pagers and tones would only be used when an emergency arises and not be used on a normal basis. The issue brought up in the email was that "using paging for your area emergency alerting is probably a good idea for the amatuers but you can't 'broadcast' in amateur so it won't work for the non-amateur volunteers. how will the fcc know...trust me they will know and apply the regs.sternly. you may be better off getting the hams on the fire freq than the other way around. the trick is that you must identify who you are calling then page that person. unless they have relaxed the regs and i doubt that..." I would figure that this idea would be legally under FCC rules, as I would not consider it broadcasting. I may be wrong, but I would think that if sending out a tone page to people that have the pagers or radios setup to receive it, would be considered a 1 way announcement, such as a club meeting reminder that might be sent out, or the various information spots that are sent out by the ARRL on the W1AW. Would I be right in assuming that a page that follows this format, "TONE A - TONE B, Attenattion all Kaufman County ARES Members, we are activiting the skywarn net at the request of the National Weather Service, with severe storms moving into our county, First Page 2:00pm - KE5KBY" or "TONE A - TONE B, Attention Kaufman County CERT, we have a major accident on Highway 20, 2 miles east of Terrell, assistance required, First Tone 1:30 am - KE5KBY" I consider this to be an information transmission, identifying the people that are receiving the page, the time and orginiating callsign. Now, granted ARES members or CERT members that are amateur operators would be able to reply to inform they are responding, but otherwise, this is just an information page being sent out. I have heard clubs here locally send the following: "To all TVARC members, we will be holding our monthly meeting and swap shop on March 20, at the Mcdonalds on I-20 in Terrell. We will start at 5:00" Now, correct me if I am wrong, but is this not the same type of "page" announcement as I described in my pages. Would like all sorts of input on this. If it comes down to it and we can find the funding, yeah, it would be nice to have a commericial system on a non-amateur frequency, and we have even been quoted on a system that would also include 2 way pagers, which would allow the person receiving the page to respond back to the base stations, which we really are not worried about, but he system to cover our county would cost us about $350,000.00 The main problem with going with a commercial paging system, as far as getting an account with a company, is that not many of them offer voice paging and if we get the alpha pagers, so that details can be sent, it would cost us more than we want to pay out each month. I know that our sherrif's department using one transmitter and tones most of the fire departments in the county, though 2 or 3 run their own radio systems. But to try and get approval to add tones to their system and allow us to get the pagers is almost impossible. Basically, they feel that their dispatchers are already doing to much. Maybe we need to by the $350,000 system and get the fire departments to change their paging service over to it and charge a small yearly fee to maintain their system? Hmm....... Thanks for the input and look forward to this ones also.
