John Fraizer <John.Fraizer@EnterZone.Net> writes:

Joe Shaw wrote:

...

This is why HAM radios and the appropriate licenses can come in very handy, especially in cases of emergency or natural disaster. Does anyone in the business use RF for backup communications?

You mean we're not ALL licensed amateurs? ;-)

While it's a useful thing for people to have, keep in mind that amateur radio has significant limitations. While you're allowed to do more or less anything you have to during an emergency situation with lives at stake, supporting your commercial activities using ham bands is a no-no, even in a widescale "emergency/outage" situation... If anyone wants tactical comms for your company during a complete telco outage, then get some commercial radio sets and a frequency allocation. It's relatively painless. The new cellphones that have direct phone-to-phone capabilities *may* stay up if their cell service goes down, but I don't know the mechanism in detail so check with your resident expert. Using "CB" bands and walkie-talkies may work, if they don't get innundated with other people trying to do the same thing. -george william herbert gherbert@crl.com KD6WUQ