Re: Sabotage attacks knock out phone service [Telecom]

As a ham, I have to ask where was the amateur radio communty in this.
>It's been proven time and again that amateur radio is the only thing >standing when landline and cell services go down.

Preparing for disaster: Phone outage tests emergency workers

And officials in Santa Clara and Monterey counties are praising ham radio operators not only for their quick response, but also for coming through when state-of-the-art technology failed. Amateur radio operators, armed with their antennaed boxes - the true wireless - became the eyes and ears of police and fire on the streets.

They were able to communicate with police and firefighters, who were using their own two-way radios.

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Ham radio may be still standing when cell and landlines are down, but >it's not operational. Short of having hams drive around with >loudspeakers advertising their presence, there's no way to make the >citizenry aware of their capabilities.

Where are the citizens going to go in an emergency when the telephone system doesn't work? Town hall, fire halls, hospitals or similar sites. So that's where the amateurs would be. In the above story near a school. In other areas amateurs provided communications to neighbouring municipalities.

BTW I suspect a number of the radio systems the emergency services [use] depend on fibre or other telco connections between the various radio repeater sites around the city. I wonder if they were sitll working.

Amateur radio is very much into new technologies. For example, Winlink

2000

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is a distributed, redundant system for moving emails via amateur radio dozens of miles or thousands of files without reguiring any other infrustructure other than amateur radio equipment. Granted these emails won't be large or contain videos but in a disaster situation they are invaluable for getting messages through.

Tony