I’m a qualified amateur radio operator and I work in IT as my day job, if you can’t see how bad it would be to continue to put all our eggs into one basket for datacom, primarily in the hands of poorly regulated private cellphone companies, then I can’t really help you.
Fact is, 80-110 MHz FM requires less infrastructure (aka fewer broadcast points) to more completely cover an area, and it’s almost impossible to have it blocked by buildings/walls/vehicles, etc. Sure, the signal might go to shit, but it’s at least able to be heard even in very challenging conditions. It also takes nearly no power to run. Receiver chips can be made so small that it would be a trivial addition to make for most cellular manufacturers. There’s no licensing fees or service fees so the entire process is free from top to bottom.
Add that to the fact that it’s already deployed, regulated and configured for emergencies, and you have a very low implementation cost for a very reliable and robust service.
The idea here isn’t to add it so we can listen to FM commercials all day. Anyone I know who had FM on their cellphone, didn’t use it; and I won’t suggest that anyone will use it now… but if there’s a major catastrophe and the cellular networks go down, having a recieve-only way of getting emergency information to those who are otherwise disconnected from everything is a big deal. A lot of households are going digital only for their entertainment and getting rid of old stereos and hi-fi units with radio built in for all HDMI systems that make their Netflix work nicely. Many also have zero land line service so once the internet stops functioning and the cell towers go out, the only method of communication these people will have is standing on their porch and screaming into the void.
I’ve monitored communications during major outages, like sitting hurricane hits on the contental US and heard the radio traffic stating that there’s people at x location and all consumer/commercial communication systems are inoperable. The only thing working was an amateur owned and operated repeater network to relay the communication across the region; I was listening to an internet relay on the outskirts of the coverage area and it was clear that they would have had no outbound communication if they didn’t have those repeater nets. Inbound, I’m sure FM and AM radio was still operable, so anyone with an FM set could hear news and alerts as they happened.
Radio is also nearly instant, while LoRA mesh networks rely on people having nodes to relay the messages and the messages may be interrupted while a node is down. The first isn’t a thing yet, the second is difficult to do at best. Amateur FM cells can transmit over many miles potentially several dozen, meanwhile most LoRA can’t reach a fraction of that far, requiring a massively larger number of them, and each one is a potential point of failure.
With regulation, commercial broadcast FM sites are required by law to participate in the emergency broadcast system, no such regulation exists for LoRA.
Under normal operating conditions, FM is fairly useless, unless you feel like listening to ads, but in an emergency, it can be the only way for you to be told that, though the weather seems to have gotten better, it’s temporary and you should stay where you are.
All my handheld radio transceivers have commercial FM recievers built in, so either way, I’m covered. I also have several dedicated FM and shortwave receiving radios around. I have adequate communication capability for an emergency. I’m not perfectly set up, even remotely, but I’ll be able to reach out to someone if I’m without power, internet, cellphone coverage, etc, during a major event. I can call for help, get information about the situation and it’s duration, I can reach out over 10 miles or more to communicate with others, all with my handheld.
And you want to take all this infrastructure and preparedness that we as a society have developed over more than a century, and flush it all away… because why? You have a hard-on for LoRA? You think old tech is useless in today’s day and age? Because you have a problem with broadcast radio trying to survive, a service that’s free to you, by playing ads?
Do you realize how stupid you sound?
ioslife@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
Well this was a fun read and makes me want to be better prepared for a potential real emergency.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
I would like to be the first to encourage you on that journey.
For me, I’ve mainly focused on skills, more than stuff. IMO, preppers are a bit short sighted most of the time, they’ll pack a month’s worth of supplies in an airtight drum and leave it in their garage. It’s 50+ lbs of stuff. You’re telling me that when you get an evacuation order, you’re going to haul that thing into you Ford Explorer before you evacuate, when there may be a flood or wildfire just minutes from you? Okay.
I have my first aid certificate. Standard first aid, level c CPR and AED training. I also know some basic self defense (though it’s been years since I practiced anything), and I know enough about radio that if I’m presented with a walkie or ham radio, or something, I know what I’m doing without being told (maybe if I find one and the previous owner of the radio is incapacitated or something).
I’ve put a first aid kit everywhere I practically can, we have two in the house, plus one in my car (soon to be all cars). I also want to look into some MRE’s and a safe way to store a moderate amount of water long term in my car (winters here are kind of a shit show)… plus maybe some basic survival supplies, enough to make a fire and a crude shelter, which can be repurposed for other things as well. Maybe a water filter for turning Creek water into drinkable/potable water… I want to keep it fairly trim. For shelter supplies, a good multipurpose knife, a couple of tarps and some good rope… you get the idea. Though, that stuff sounds like things you would carry to kidnap and murder someone. Not my intent, but it’s funny how much overlap there is between survival gear and gear for more nefarious activities…
I’m also very well learned on how to fix just about any common thing, like cars or something, so I should be pretty useful in a pinch. I have a ham radio in my car with more range than the walkies I have, and I have a small collection of walkies all with extra batteries charged and ready to fly (usually already attached to my backpack which is my usual daily carry). I need to make some tweaks and round out my setup (as previously mentioned), but I feel like I’m in a good spot for now.