My agency (Fire Department) is looking into becoming a class 3 responder for the DHLS. The State(Ohio)DHLS has a listing of capabilities we would need. They are willing to spend "some" money. One of the capabilities is Mobile Internet access. (I would assume for a Mobil command center) I have always feared that there are not enough tech geeks involved in this kind of stuff, at least not at the working level. I'm not sure what they are really asking. I fear nether are they. It would be EZ to slap a wireless card in a note book and say there you go, but we all know that would be worthless. My next thought was the "verison broadband service" as seen on TV. No good. We would be talking rural NW Ohio. It appears (naturally) the version deal is only in larger Metro areas. I'm sure something could be rigged up with a cell phone, but it would only be dial up, surely not adequate. That brings me to some type satellite deal. Possibly like an offering from Dish Network? Which I know nothing about but I would assume are quite costly. Does anyone have any experiences in some type set up like this? I have been asked to come up with some type of pricing.
Any other ideas would be welcome?
/rant on/
Looks to me like instead of simply throwing money at things they need to get there heads together along with some good people (read that non politicians) and figure out what will work. I have always been shocked when attending "disaster planning" drills at the lack of geeky people that know how to work. As fare as I can tell no one communicates with the phone company about what they could do for us communication wise. Genius isn't it?
/rant off/