King Wants To Sell Out Ham Radio

An anonymous reader writes "Rep. Peter King (R-NY), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has introduced HR 607, the 'Broadband for First Responders Act of 2011,' which has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee (which handles telecommunications legislation). The bill would create a nationwide Public Safety broadband network using the so-called 'D-Block' of spectrum in the 700 MHz range for Public Safety use. But to pay for it, he wants to sell off 420-440 MHz, currently heavily used by the military, satellites and Amateur Radio operators."

Comments

Re:You'll miss them in a disaster

[OzPeter]

Laugh at the old Ham guys all you want. When a real disaster hits and the infrastructure goes down, I bet you'll be going to them and asking for their help.

Yeah .. but when the world ends, that will result in sending submarines to San Diego to track down morse keys that are being randomly tapped by coke bottles hooked into window shades that are blowing in the breeze

Re:You'll miss them in a disaster

[khallow]

To be fair, the coke bottle was one of the better actors in the film.

Re:Won't the military have something to say about

[Doctor Memory]

Yep. Amateurs understand they are "secondary users" of this spectrum. And it's always a good idea to defer to primary users who have attack helicopters and radio-direction-finding equipment... ;)

Re:But will we?

[Abstrackt]

You could, y'know, use a fucking search engine and answer the question yourself, but then you wouldn't get a chance to be a belittling piece of shit on /.

Hey pot, I don't think you and kettle have been formally introduced yet.