Steve,
Well said and the whole incident does not surprise me. This industry has
always served people in a manor "outside of the box" and it is obviously not
compatible with the systems and processes in place. Mac's team from the
start had the idea we need to help these people now, the system be dammed,
we can't wait. This has worked well and may not have served as large a
number of people as the other project could have, but it did actually help
people right away. It is very disheartening to hear of the way things
happened on the Part-15 project. Being in emergency management for over 17
years involved with Amateur radio, this disaster is completely hobbled by
the new processes put in place post 9/11 with command and control. Let's
hope this does not hamper the spirit of those wanting to help and that we
can get those efforts re-directed to projects where we can make a difference
no matter how big or small.
Mark's comment about teaming up with the Ham radio community is
actually a
very good idea. If anyone thinks they would like to pursue this I am in a
position to start this process.
Thank You,
Brian Webster N2KGC
www.wirelessmapping.com <http://www.wirelessmapping.com>
Free World Dialup #481416
-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Stroh [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2005 10:57 AM
To: WISPA General List
Subject: [WISPA] Kelly WISP Incident
(While I haven't followed the WISPA list very closely lately, I saw
some postings there about Kelly that led me to believe that I should
also post this on the WISPA General list. It was originally posted to
the emergency-relief list.)
On Saturday, September 7, 2005, the team of WISPs pre-positioned at the
former Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas to provide Internet
access for the large Hurricane Katrina relief camp there discovered
that SBC has been onsite at Kelly for approximately one week installing
communications infrastructure. SBC personnel stated that SBC would be
able to provide all telephone and Internet access that the relief camp
will need.
To understand this turn of events, a brief sequence of events is in
order.
1) In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the FCC requested various
entities nominally under its jurisdiction to keep it informed of
capabilities and plans to restore communications in the affected area.
2) PART-15.ORG responded to the FCC request, explaining that WISPs in
the affected area were asking for donated systems and labor to provide
Internet access to relief shelters and key agencies such as law
enforcement agencies whose facilities were no longer usable or
operational.
3) Following up on PART-15.ORG’s input, the FCC requested PART-15.ORG
to submit more detailed “capabilities” documentation. As part of such
documentation, a “template” plan for providing communications to the
recently designated relief shelter at Kelly Air Force Base was
included. The “Kelly plan” would provide wireless backhaul, inter-base
distribution, Wi-Fi in all shelter areas, VOIP telephony, and computers
for shelter resident use, most of which would be operational within 48
hours of access to the base.
4) The FCC was impressed with the “Kelly plan”, enough so to provide
it to ARC Headquarters IT staff.
5) On Saturday, September 3, PART-15.ORG was told by the FCC that
“The Kelly Plan is a go.” (Exact quote.)
6) Within 24 hours of “Go”, PART-15.ORG mobilized volunteers,
donations, and began developing a management infrastructure to manage
the numerous and overlapping tasks.
7) For an entire week, the growing team of WISPs contacted Kelly
personnel, made technology plans, arranged logistics, and everything
else they could do without actual access onto the base. PART-15.ORG
tried continuously to arrange access through their FCC contacts, and
the local team pressed on its local contacts to arrange access.
8) On Saturday, Sepember 10, the team of WISPs learns of SBC’s work
at Kelly.
Learning of SBC’s work at Kelly was disheartening, to say the least.
For one, the WISP team came fully prepared to install infrastructure
equivalent to SBC’s efforts, but based on Wireless Internet technology,
enabling the installation to be largely complete within 48 hours of
access to the facilities… stymied only by lack of access to Kelly.
One of the most disturbing things about “Kelly WISP incident” is that
the FCC and ARC squandered WISP industry resources by requesting
support for Kelly- resources that would have otherwise been deployed to
support WISPs working directly in the affected areas. The WISP
community invested great effort in mobilizing resources to Kelly –
equipment, labor, design time, formation of an extended management
team, numerous conference calls, time taken away from jobs resulting in
missed paychecks, submission of endless revisions of paperwork to the
FCC, the sleepless nights spent planning for Kelly… the list goes on.
It’s small consolation that PART-15.ORG learned a lot from the “Kelly
WISP Incident” about how to put together a distributed organization.
In the aftermath of the “Kelly WISP Incident”, PART-15.ORG has now
redirected the portions of its assembled resources for Hurricane
Katrina Relief that were intended for Kelly and other FCC and ARC
requests into direct support of WISPs operating in the affected areas,
as WISPA has done from the beginning.
It seems to me that that in widespread disasters, organizations on the
scale of PART-15.ORG, WISPA, and indeed the entire WISP industry may
not be able to, by their nature, effectively interface with very large
organizations on the scale of ARC and FEMA, and probably the FCC. There
seems to be too great a mismatch between the WISP industry and its:
* bias for action,
* distributed membership that can see the conditions in an affected
area and rapidly report them, and
* ability to quickly mobilize support in the affected areas from fellow
WISPs and the WISP industry to rapidly implement emergency
communications with minimal overhead
In vivid contrast, the large organizations are:
* biased toward extended analysis, planning, and process,
* hierarchical – key decisions about what is needed are made at the top
instead of in the field,
* responses are implemented on a strategic scale, which takes time.
Where the stakes are so high and time is short, the two may well be
simply incompatible.
To clear up any potential misconception, this is Steve Stroh’s account
of the “Kelly WISP Incident”. Any errors in fact are mine. I asked
Michael Anderson for some clarification on points, and Michael knew
that I would be posting this message, but he did not have any
substantial input into what I was going to say, nor has he seen or
approved the content of this message before it was posted to the list.
I request that you not make this message public. I will be putting out
a more generic “WISPs weren’t needed at Kelly, redirecting those
resources to directly support WISPs” statement for public consumption
soon. I felt strongly that the direct participants in PART-15.ORG’s
efforts relating to Kelly were owed a complete explanation and getting
this out to the lists was my first priority.
Thanks,
Steve
---
Steve Stroh
425-939-0076 | Skype: stevestroh2 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
http://www.stevestroh.com
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