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Comment by molticrystal | Hacker News Reader

With the advancement of satellite technology, which can provide cell service even during natural disasters when traditional terrestrial communication infrastructure is disrupted, I wonder if amateur radio use in emergencies will be superseded.

If I'm incorrect, I'd appreciate it if you could explain why. While I see amateur radio continuing to have value in educational and hobby contexts, I'm skeptical about its ongoing importance in emergencies , which seems to be a primary motivator for many enthusiasts.

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As one example, satellites won't help in situations such as marathons. The problem with marathons is the number of devices that are trying to access a limited spectrum. A satellite station will have bandwidth limitations as well, as its most likely use is through WiFi.

The example in the QRPer article above indicates a different limitation. He did have a satellite dish for internet access, but there was no way to distribute that signal over multiple mile radius, which is what he did with both FM simplex and at some point with 2 meter repeaters. For such communication to work, all parties would need a dish.

He invited neighbors to come over to use his internet service so they could make wifi calls to family.

His daughters and wife staffed the FM channels, keeping the local net alive.

To be clear, HAM as backup for cell works because so few people use it. If it were insanely popular, HAM would be ironically less useful as a backup.

Ham frequencies aren't run as a free for all where everyone is trying to contest the frequencies. During communications, there is typically a person who controls the frequency, designating who should talk at any given time and keep things orderly. The same applies for emergency comms.

That doesn't make any sense unless you're trying to say if it was more popular than cell phones, then it wouldn't be a backup.

Will such a system handle a sudden demand nearing the maximum capacity of its terrestrial counterpart? That's really the crux of the issue: in an emergency public networks can be overwhelmed.

Many county government agencies don't work with hams anymore because they have sat links and other communication available to them. I'm sure as technology progresses and it becomes feasible and affordable to give individual first responders satcom abilities, but I'm not sure that every person with a cell phone will be able to stabily access satcom in an emergency for a while yet.

Satelite still is centralized, needing a core to handle billing and routing. In time of war, it is quite easy to disable, and it remains fragile due to complexity, whilst being in someone else's control.

HAM radio is robust, has no outside dependency, and is fully in control of people using it. You just need to have the equipment, no ifs or buts.

One natural disaster is solar storms, which can take out sattelites; another possibility, to dial it up to over 9000, is that sattelites will be a likely target in WW3.

Finally, sattelites and the tools to communicate with them are relatively expensive, while you can get e.g. a Baofeng hand radio for $20-$30.

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