I heard an NPR report tonight about the meltdown of the cellular networks in Washington DC as a result of the record crowds present for President-Elect Obama's inauguration... and nearly everyone having (and trying to use) a cellphone.
It was comical listening to the description of the problem, especially knowing that access was barely half the problem - the other problem was the switching bottleneck. Another would be handling all the requests for IP addresses :-)
What would have happened if Amateur Radio had been there, providing a real-world example of Amateur Radio being relevant?
Something a lot of like highly localized Wi-Fi HotSpots (think 20' radius) all being fed by high-bandwidth links which are operating on (uncontested) Amateur Radio spectrum like 1.2 GHz using off-the-shelf Broadband Wireless Internet Access gear tuned to 1.24 - 1.30 GHz (60 MHz of spectrum there). A web splash screen briefly mentioning that it was being provided by Amateur Radio and you would have gotten a helluva lot of Blackberry and iPhone-toting techies to be really curious about Amateur Radio.
It would work gloriously.
But then... Amateur Radio wants to stay mired in the past - tube rigs, CW, contesting, analog voice repeaters occupying all VHF and UHF channels... all that.
Sigh...
73,
Steve N8GNJ
Hola Steve
Solicito si es posible me envies via e-mail Manual equipo Johnson Messenger 4145. Soy de Chile y soy Radioaficionado mi caracteristica es CE2OHK, mi nombre es Fernando.
Muchas Gracias
Posted by: Fernando Vásquez S. | November 13, 2009 at 04:53 PM