Actually, the government's involvement in all this can be best defined as, "A solution looking for a problem..."
We’ve got a lot of that going on these days. Unfortunately, with government involvement, it can become a mandate in one form or another, while the “free market” would pretty much fail to build momentum on such project... or maybe determine that it's the best thing in the world and is a "must have." Knowing now that we are not living in floating apartments and zipping around in Jetsons cars as was the vision during my childhood, I suspect that very little would change, left to voluntary implementation.
This could perhaps be a valuable service at the state EOC level rather than the county or local level, assuming that the state EOC doesn't already have access to SHARES or other Federal level ALE-type services (some do, some don't depending on how forward-looking they are).
Each EOC has the ability to participate in their respective states’ OPSECURE program. As a former county-level emergency manager, our state had ultimate responsibility for administering and licensing it (per 90.264 and other requirements). We would not have been able to participate in FNARS on our own, and our participation in SHARES was through a host federal agency and in supporting that agency.
The reality was that our emergency management agency was not afforded much credibility or funding and operated an 8 hr-a-day/ 5 day-a-week operation for primarily three reasons - 1) there was a 50% matching grant to do so, with the director's salary being matched; 2) staff were pressed into duty ferreting out grant funds to support esoteric projects, nifties, and materials for established responder organizations (all of which ceased and started to rust when sustainment monies dried up, as the recipients had no intention of maintaining most of the programs as going concerns); and 3) some staffers were given double or triple duties supporting other non-EM operations. I know other communities where they were afforded even less "cred" and the EM director was a public works guy who worked EM in between picking up trash and recycling.
The problem with a marketed service is that it’s no good if you’re the only one on it. It’s like playing walkie-talkie with only one radio. The big concern shouldn’t be “can it work?” If you throw enough money at something, it WILL technically “work.” The big concern is planning. Who? What? Where? When? How? Why? Like Ku band satellite services, if you have a terminal, and you’re in an affected area, prepare for a big chokedown and throttleback in QoS when all of the NGOs and non-military satellite fedworld clients start trucking in. How much would that be? I have never gotten a straight answer from providers for guaranteed throughput when the cavalcade of media and NGOs truck in and park their satellite trucks in every available parking space on Main Street. I’d venture it’s a trade secret, and I’d venture it’s substantial. Remember, Rockwell Collins is doing this for revenue. That means there is a potential chokedown point involved if having one of these becomes a de facto standard of service.
wow cool newfangled hf radios that uses this new ALE cutting edge tech LOL
Who said it’s MIL-STD-188-141A/B? As devil’s advocate, if I were a manufacturer like R/C, I’d make it proprietary so you could not use an Icom, Barrett, Codan, or Harris radio. Anyway, ALE might be a pushbutton technology, but it is not a “quick” technology. You can call someone – think of that as a “request to talk” and the radio will step through frequencies in the list sending a (pretty long) call. It might take over a minute to establish contact, if there is a path between Station A and Station B. In my experience, it works a lot more like a very slow Nextel Direct Connect in that you dial someone up and maybe they answer. I have never played with “all call” or various net call schemes. I suspect propagation would have to favor the majority of stations in the net and others would not receive the message (but I could be wrong).
