[amsat-bb] Re: Phase 4 versus Eagle

[Edward Cole]

Fuel is not the only thing that will take out a site:
1- Wind Storm = no tower
2- Flood = circuits shorted, shelter swept away
3- Snow/Ice = collapses the equipment shelter, breaks antennas
4- Earthquake = takes out the interconnecting lines, tower, shelter, everything
5- Fire = bring marshmallows & frankfurts

Satellite-base infrastructure is largely insulated from these issues - IF:
there is self-powered, portable equipment, randomly distributed, with 
trained operators
...sounds like Ham Radio?

At 04:30 PM 12/17/2007, Nate Duehr wrote:
>MKM wrote:
> > Forget the EMCOMM support, that does not make sense anymore. Read on...
> >
> > WIMAX will be available from sprint soon. THAT will be a reliable
> > technology for ecom. With one access point, they will cover a wide
> > area for both data and voice. NOW, imagine multiple access point
> > ( and I mean 2 or 3 max) and regardless of what the ecom situation
> > is, help will get through.
>
>This service will be coming from U.S. carriers who wouldn't even put
>battery/generator backup on most of their wireless POP's until told to
>do so by the FCC after Katrina:
>
><http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2007/Dec/10/fcc_ruling_may_spur_generator_demand.html>
>
>Even with the new ruling, the FCC only recommends that such sites
>operate for 8 hours on emergency power.
>
>In other words, they don't expect the cellular companies to REFUEL those
>generators in any timely fashion.
>
>I worked for a large co-location company a few years ago, and we had a
>diesel contract that was VERY expensive.
>
>I talked to the truck driver once, and he told me that the order of his
>stops in bad weather/disaster situations would have been:
>
>Denver Health Medical Center - the alive ones at the hospital.
>Denver Police Headquarters and the Jail facility - the troublemakers,
>keep them inside.
>Denver Morgue - if it's warm out, you don't want the dead ones thawing
>and you probably have outdoor triage and refrigeration going on if
>things aren't quite as bad as Katrina.
>Denver Library - Security.  Historical items.
>Our data center.
>
>Another route for another truck included the telco central office
>(Denver Main), and the "telco hotel" next door, as it's only customers
>that truck would serve.  As long as the outage lasted, those truck
>wouldn't leave their "circular" routes which were planned to arrive just
>as generators were running out of fuel in a continuous loop.  Any delay
>and we (being at the bottom) would either fall off the list, or they'd
>make arrangements to skip the library.
>
>That was his route with the diesel truck.  He would run around in
>circles and do it all again, if the problem lasted for multiple days.
>.
>Cell sites?  Nope.  WiMax sites?  No way.
>
>Reality bites:  Cell carriers don't pay to be on priority diesel
>contracts.  Diesel deliveries to cell sites are on "best effort"
>contracts.  They fall below everyone else with priority contracts.
>
>Good luck with your WiMax as an EmComm tool.  Let us know how well it
>serves you when the power goes out and the diesel trucks can't get to
>all those new generators at all the WiMax and cell sites
>
>Nate WY0X
>
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73,
Ed - KL7UW
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