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"......the company through its wholly-owned subsidiary, SEA, it has shipped seventeen channels of base station equipment as the first portion of a planned network to be installed throughout Georgia, Alabama and Florida using spectrum in the 220 MHz service." The network will be further enhanced with the inclusion of Smartlink network switches that provide the versatility of being able to communicate between their current frequencies and the new 220 equipment. Bob Wise, Regional Sales Manager for Smartlink, stated, ``This joint effort is an important step in fully developing the potential of the 220 MHz service and its ability to provide a simpler but substantially less expensive alternative to Nextel.

Datamarine's President, David Thompson, stated ``We are pleased that a group of utility companies like GEMC has selected SEA equipment to help further develop the advantages offered at 220 MHz which provides low cost voice and data mobile communications.''

Story> http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/991101/wa_datamar_1.html

-- maid upname (noid@ihope.com), December 11, 1999

Answers

Seems like a lot of money and resources for a "non-event"...

-- Uncle Bob (UNCLB0B@AOL.COM), December 11, 1999.

Radio has the disadvantage of being open to deliberate or accidental interference as well as being monitored by scanners. The advantages are low cost and reliability. If interference and eavesdropping aren't problems, this is a good move. The range will depend on the output power and the height of the antenna, I am assuming this will be FM simplex and repeater work as well as data packets.

-- Forrest Covington (theforrest@mindspring.com), December 11, 1999.

The speech encoding is probably digital, which should alleviate the security problem.

Look, it's a GOOD thing to have an alternative to Telcos...look at what Radio Amateurs do during disasters...they have Generators, practice by holding "Field Days" where these contingency plans are practiced at least annually. Remember, Telco service interrruption is ROUTINE in a natural disaster.

Establishing a formal alternate network goes a long way to bring reliable electric power to the service area.

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), December 11, 1999.