Ham Radio Served as Main Link to Disaster Area

SonicSpike writes "A University of Central Florida ham radio operator K4VUD (and founder of their film program) was caught in Port Blair during the earthquake and following tsunami! He and a team of other ham radio operators arrived in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to setup the region's first ham station 2 weeks prior to the disaster. Once they realized what happened they immediately began transmitting for 20 straight hours using car batteries as a power source. Most cellular and land-line communication was down. His team became the main link to the rest of the world from the region."

Comments

Re:Another good reason for BPL....

[Ryan Stortz]

Yeah, because you know all those bastards using their high speed internet connections right next door is preventing you from contacting the civilized world.

This would be one of the times when BPL would probably be either out or turned off.

Re:Another good reason for BPL....

[AK Marc]

Just another reminder (the World Trade Center should serve as another one in recent memory) that Amateur radio frequencies should be protected from spectrum auctions and Broadband over Power Lines (BPL).

That's right. All the interference from the dead power lines will get in the way in an emergency like this.

Sometimes just making money isn't the best thing.

Yeah, screw all the people that don't have broadband in their area. They shouldn't waste their time on that new fangled internet thingey, and should just buy a radio to pass the time. Maybe they'll get lucky and the person on the other end will have an Internet connection to run Google searches for them.

You do realize that BPL is being touted as a way to get high-speed data to places that have no facilities for high-speed currently? It isn't just about giving people a 3rd choice of local delivery (Would you like DSL, cable, or BPL?). It is that there are many areas where there isn't any fiber and isn't sufficient copper to bring in anything other than very poor dial-up into a town and for distribution within the town (outside the more limited DSL range).

So, in the choice between Internet access and toy radios, you pick the toys. If the carriers were to get their backups in place, then there wouldn't be a problem. If all the fiber and copper out of the state were cut and all the power in the state were out, I'd still have an Internet connection. If there was sufficient resiliency and redundancy in networks today, there would never be a need to fall back to old technology.