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/
Hughes has a program just for this sort of application. They are pretty much the only one in the game as far as remote broadband connections go.
Wow, interesting error while clicking on that link (tested in IE and FF): It seems you have to get there through the menus, and cannot refer to pages directly.
Here is how you can get there: Click on: http://www.hughesnetbiz.com/, then in the left upper corner click on "Explore HughesNet".
Yep I got the same error, but did a google and got there that way. Thats what I was looking for. Does anyone know how well it works? Think I may be contacting them. Thanks for the replies probably saved me hours on google. Mike
Jeez... I know better than that... shoulda tested the link. Go to http://www.hughesnet.com and click the For Govenrment link and then the Emergency Communications link.
I know a couple of people that have their consumer service on their house, and have no complaints. Satellite isn't perfect, it is blocked by trees and structures, and can be blocked by clouds, at least in the consumer stuff, dunno if they use heavier transceivers for ERTs or not.
This is what I have from a local provider I have a dish on my house and get my signal from a nearby mountaintop...about 5 miles away. I get about 1.5meg down and 1meg up but he is planning on upping it to 3meg down soon
It works great. Unfortunately the dish they are refering to is relatively large and how would you position it with no "techno-geeks". That doesn't mean the concept is bad. Just look up satellite phone service. I tested it for my company once and it works ok. Not very good inside of a large corporate building but outside it's OK. If it's good enough for Osama it's good enough. Thatis direct frome phone handset to satellite and anywhere else you want to phone. Use it instead of cell phone service and it will do the job. The phone isn't "tiny" and it has a whip antenna but it works.
Canopy is nice but its really meant as a fixed system where you tune in your antennas and they stay put. The biggest problem with canopy, and most non-licensed wireless gear in general is that it operates in the 2.4ghz or 5.3/5.8ghz frequencies. Trees and concrete buildings are a HUGE barrier for this equipment. You need to plan on having line of sight anywhere you want to use this unlicensed wireless networking equipment. This doesn't mean that you need to be able to see the other radio with your eyes, but that there are no obstacles such as trees or buildings between you and the other end. Not too long ago motorola did release some 900mhz canopy gear that can burn through trees but at the expensive of throughput and range and dropping you in an already crowded frequency. I'd go for satellite. In a disaster if you had a wireless link to an ISP that was stable...the ISP might have had their bandwidth or power severed.
