People who work in the radio industry, whether it be installers or techs, do NOT know the seriousness and the harm it would do if people keep believing that cell phones and police radios will beat amateur radio in an emergency.
What's really sad about this statement is that you obviously have no understanding what so ever about public safety radio systems. Your statement shows a lack of understanding and knowledge that I personally would not post on the internet for the world to see.
The truth is that nobody plans for the worst and that is why I support this rulemaking process for encryption on the amateur bands.
And exactly how did we make the jump from system survivability to ham operators needing to use encryption? Encrypting ham radio traffic is about the most pointless thing you can do. If you want amateur radio to be the saving grace of the world, the last thing you want to do is make it more complicated and less interoperable. The nice thing about amateur radio is that with a 2 meter FM radio you can talk to any other ham with a similar radio. Why put that at risk by adding encryption to this mess?
I read through the 5-mile long(exaggeration) thread on the FCC process and while some of you have some good marks, NONE of you realize that the Cell Phone Networks will not be able to be used in a national emergency. Here's one reason why, CLOGGING.
And while it's true that the cellular networks are designed around flimsy infrastructure and no one should rely on them for an emergency, there are solutions that will help public safety around congestion. Please, before you post any more on this subject, go research GETS (Government Emergency Telecommunication Service) and WPS (Wireless Priority Service).
People will jam the networks trying to get a hold of family members PLUS the possibility that the towers will be down.
Very likely, but this doesn't necessarily affect public safety radio systems. And before you start with the ham radio being superior thing, take a look at NIFOG to see the plans that are in place to allow public safety agencies to communicate.
Even if the president was to make a law to prevent people from using the cell networks, it wouldn't be paid attention to.
GETS/WPS, look it up.
As far as radio systems go, NONE of you realize that all radio systems require POWER. And some encrypted radio systems require POWER to run the system that does the encryption.
Uh, yeah, pretty much anyone who has ever touched a radio before has some grip on the idea that electricity is involved at some level. It's pretty obvious you've never been to a modern radio site designed for public safety.
The LTE network will not come into existence, that is something that I feel is guaranteed.
The LTE networks are already running, AT&T, Verizon..... As for the FirstNet, it will happen, but they'll run out of funding to complete it and will end up leasing services from the carriers to fill in all the gaps. It's going to suck because just like p25, by the time it makes it to market, there will be something better, faster and cheaper available. This is just the way these things work out.
So, it's pretty obvious you are a ham operator, and it's pretty obvious you've drunk the kool-aid about how Ham radio is going to save the world. What you seem to not understand is that most commercial/public safety radio guys are also Ham operators. Of all the ones I know, 95% of them have their ham tickets.
Thinking that amateur radio has some secret power over the spectrum that no one else does is not the case. While it's true that some agencies will let their infrastructure crumble before fixing it, or won't train their people how to use things like talk around, tac frequencies, etc, most agencies do. Most public safety people already have lots of simplex frequencies in their radios. Dispatch centers have higher powered systems that are simplex and let them talk to other dispatch centers, all simplex. I know, I've got a 911 dispatch center at work and I was there when someone went around the area cutting fiber optic cable knocking down the PSTN and cellular networks. Some of the circuits used to connect dispatch centers to the remote radios went down, but you know what, everything kept going.
You know where the hams ended up? Out at the hospitals passing bed counts and other non life safety traffic. Out on the street corners being eyes and ears. All good things, but to suggest that the public safety agencies all ground to a halt and the ham radio operators were the only ones who could communicate is as far from the truth as you can get.
Look, I have an amateur radio licenses also, I have for 20+ years. I've also worked in public safety communications and telecommunications fields for that long. Yes, Ham radio has some unique capabilities, but to say that all emergency communications will grind to a halt and the world will rely on some guy with a bunch of radios stuffed in his wife's mini-van is just comical.