K=D8HB wrote:
Responders' lack of spectrum 'cost lives'
By Shaun Waterman
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor

Published 9/12/2005 11:40 AM

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- Former Sept. 11 commission Chairman Tom
Kean says first responders in Louisiana not having had access to
radio spectrum needed for interoperable communications "cost lives,"
as it did at the World Trade Center.

"On the ground, the people that get there first can't talk to each
other because the radio communications don't work," Kean told CNN
Sunday. "They haven't got enough what's called spectrum."

.. . . and on and on and on . .

My ongoing understanding has been that there is already gobs of wide
open UHF spectrum space already available via all the unused UHF TV
channels. Even in very large metropolitan areas. Each one of those
channels is 4 Mhz wide or something like that, how many emergency
services NBFM channels can be squeezed into 4 Mhz? A *bunch*! I realize
that some of those TV-free channels are already being used by non-TV
comms here and there but in every locale it seems to me that there's
gotta be at least a few TV channels still wide open and available.
Beats me . .

Lotta nonsense in this article, bunch of clueless politicians going at
it as usual.

Some big burg or another has a major disaster to deal with and say they
have 500-1000 first responders out on the streets with the best of the
best current-tech trunking gear Motorola has to offer and all the base
infrastructure has survived, everybody can talk with everybody.

So what? They wind up with a monumental tower of babble like we have on
20 phone when a new one shows up 14.195 where everybody is stepping on
everybody else and they're worse off than they were before the
politicians got into the act with both feet.

--=20
73, de Hans, K0HB
--

w3rv