Radio Use Cases for Emergency Communications

Author(s): Barry Cousins

A recurring question this winter is, “What can IT leaders do to help their employees and communities during natural disasters?”

Since IT provides computing and communications services, nobody is asking about your ability to provide food, water, clothing, and shelter. But during these disasters, the loss of power and communications makes everything stop. “We’re all in this together” goes from platitude to reality during hurricanes, floods, snow storms, and fires – when our employees aren’t coming to work and we can’t communicate with them.

We’re good at what we do, but we’re not about to run corporately owned fiber around the neighborhood, offer a service-level agreement on network availability, and stand up a service desk to preempt radio silence during rare weather events.

But is there a way to preempt the radio silence with … radio?

The short answer is yes. IT leaders, on behalf of their employers, can play a significant role in keeping radio communications available to their broader community during a crisis. Ham radio, or amateur radio, is capable, somewhat power redundant, and already globally scaled out.

What is holding it back? Why can’t our employees just turn on a radio and talk to the community about food, shelter, and water?

  • Ignorance. They simply don’t know about the amateur radio networks spanning the globe.
  • Skills. If they know about amateur radio, few know how to use it.
  • Hardware. Very few people own a ham radio.
  • Licensing. Of the few people who own a ham radio, fewer still are licensed to use it.
  • Power redundancy. Of the scant few people who own a ham radio, fewer still can power it or recharge the batteries during a grid-down event. And most of the people who can power their radio will find that the repeater network holding it all together isn’t fully power redundant. So when your handheld radio works, you might just hear static.

These limitations can all be overcome, and IT leaders are well positioned to contribute.

Old-world radio technology could play a much larger role in our emergency communications, and corporations could play a much larger role in helping their communities prepare, survive, thrive, and return to work.

There are mature, compelling radio solutions available, but the options are not straightforward. Here are some basic facts you should know before deciding on an approach to emergency communications, followed by a typical use case for each of the four leading options.

High-Level Primer on Radio Communications

Technical Limitations

  • Radio technology is “line of sight.” This means that, almost literally, two radios need a physically unobstructed view to function. If there is a mountain in the way, you probably can’t use a radio to talk to the other side.
  • Radio is limited by the power of the signal (i.e. how many watts is the radio?).
  • It’s also limited by the antenna – size, style, placement, and the cable connecting to the radio.
  • Bad weather impedes communications quality.

Types of Radios

  • A base station is a radio device approximately the size of a home stereo amplifier. It’s stationary, wired to the power grid, and wired to an external antenna. These tend to have the highest power rating and the furthest signal reach.
  • A mobile radio is typically installed in a vehicle and is the size of a car stereo. It’s wired to the 12-volt automotive power source and an external antenna that’s often magnetically installed on the vehicle roof.
  • A handheld radio is the size of a first-generation cellphone with a rechargeable battery and a built-in antenna. These have limited range, and while you can carry them anywhere, your signal strength can vary as you change locations.

Repeaters

Repeaters are radio middlemen deployed up high in central locations to extend the radio network reach across entire regions. Your radio sends your voice to the repeater, which retransmits it to the entire area. While two user radios may not have line of sight to each other, if they can both “see” the repeater, they can communicate on the radio.

Radio Services

Land Mobile Radio

Land mobile radio (LMR) is a secure enterprise solution for people operating in sensitive, critical communications environments like police/fire/ambulance services, logistics, utilities, or theme parks. If your business needs LMR, you already have it. This service is secure, costly, complex, and tightly governed, and you’re not likely to cost-justify it or scale it out as an emergency communications backup for rare events.

There are three competing wireless solutions available to the general public.

Citizens Band

Citizens band (CB) radio is non-private, AM-radio quality, ubiquitous, affordable, ungoverned, and instantly deployable. For advanced users, the more complex single sideband (SSB) extends the reach while reducing the reliability and quality of signal. This option is still used by the trucking industry and at the individual level for basic radio communications.

Walkie-Talkie

The Family Radio Service and General Mobile Radio Service (FRS/GMRS) use walkie talkie radios you would expect to see at retailers like Best Buy or Radio Shack. They are non-private, FM-radio quality, ubiquitous, affordable, ungoverned, and instantly deployable. Informally, this is simply referred to as GMRS.

With FRS/GMRS, users in the United States can self-deploy repeaters as they wish, providing radio coverage across wider regions (neighborhoods, homesteads, parks, etc.). The idea is to deploy low-power, inexpensive solutions (even with simple Raspberry Pi hardware) to support power redundancy with solar, battery, or generator options.

In Canada and elsewhere, sadly, regulators have not approved any GMRS repeaters. While there is much public debate about the underlying laws, government regulators clearly intend that GMRS repeaters will not be used in most countries. While they are shipped outside of the US and no doubt used in some situations, this is not a solution that Info-Tech can recommend outside of the US. To make matters worse, Canada limits handheld GMRS radios to 0.5 watts and requires a fixed, permanent antenna. Thus, GMRS is almost useless in Canada unless you’re trying to chat with someone nearby and out in the open.

Ham Radio (Amateur Radio)

Amateur radio is non-private, FM-radio quality, higher power, more costly, highly governed, and not instantly deployable. This is a technically superior option for the general public to use noncommercially for hobbies, experimentation, education, and emergency communications. User licensing is free but mandatory, and the certification test is lengthy. Multiple levels of license give access to more reach with more power and more frequency bands as the user demonstrates more knowledge and proficiency. There are thousands of ham repeaters across the globe, with a universal system for user licensing and call signs.

Regulation

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) governs the radio spectrum across 193 member states, including most of the United Nations member states. Established in 1865, the ITU allocates radio spectrum, establishes standards, and assists members in the deployment of radio technologies.

Emergency Communications Use Cases

  • LMR: If you have LMR, you’re using the best option already. However, it’s likely that a high percentage of your workforce is not equipped with radios since LMR is really for field service personnel. Scaling out to your non-field personnel may be prohibitively expensive, but you might consider it because you’ve already incurred the sunk costs of LMR. LMR’s power redundancy may vary between sites, so don’t assume that yours is as redundant as the radio service behind your local ambulance services.
  • CB: If your personnel are located within a tight geography, CB radio can provide an immediate, affordable, easy-to-use communications solution. To have your signal heard across a wide area, you need your antenna to be placed up high and properly tuned to maximize your reach. This option is best suited for groups spread across flat, low-population areas, but is less useful if your people are outside of your range because CB does not offer a repeater solution.
  • GMRS (in the US): If you’re in the US and prepared to deploy and manage your own repeaters, GMRS can provide radio coverage across a geographic region quickly and affordably. Walkie-talkies are universally interoperable, so you could stand up your radio infrastructure and let the users connect with their own devices without pre-programming. High-powered mobile units allow you to operate at 15 watts rather than the maximum 0.5 watts imposed on non-US users. This option is best suited for groups that are colocated in a tight geography, and with repeaters you can overcome the limitations of an urban terrain.
  • Ham radio: Amateur radio is the best emergency communications option from a technical perspective. These non-private radios allow the highest-powered radios with the strongest signals in a variety of frequency ranges that can travel vast distances. The core technology is mature, independent of the internet, and highly commoditized.

Amateur radio is also the best option from a practical perspective because the infrastructure is mature, largely power redundant, and fully deployed. For instance, the province of Ontario (where Info-Tech headquarters is located) has over 500 repeaters deployed, while North Carolina has 498 and California has 1,842. For perspective, Rhode Island has 58, Iceland has 6, and Ireland has 43. Over 750,000 ham radio licenses have been issued in the US and 70,000 in Canada, but there is no record of how many are still active.

There is no commercially attractive perspective for ham radio because it is intentionally noncommercial. You can’t advertise, and you can’t solicit user satisfaction surveys like an oil change outfit looking for better Google reviews. This aspect can make ham radio off-putting for marketing-focused initiatives – both regulators and ham station operators are notoriously merciless in their response to commercialization of the airwaves.

The most notable limitation to emergency communications with ham radio is human: The experts who operate repeaters and train new users are aging and not being replaced by new enthusiasts at a fast enough rate. Membership in radio clubs is dwindling and the financial support for privately owned repeaters is drying up at an alarming rate. Corporations looking to boost emergency communications for their employees and communities can have the most meaningful impact by supporting their local Amateur Radio Clubs:

  • Promoting training and licensing for new ham operators.
  • Funding repeater expenses.
  • Providing facilities support for both equipment (antenna and power backup) and radio club meetings where possible.
  • Promoting and starting radio “nets,” where users test their equipment and learn the protocols for radio contacts.
  • Funding radio equipment for employees, such as a “get your license and we’ll pay for the radio” promotions. With repeaters, employees can have a useful entry-level listening device for less than $50 per radio, with the ability to transmit as soon as they acquire the needed licensing.

Nobody is asking IT to take over ham radio, but this culture of capability is getting older and the new generations are less and less equipped to use what we have already built. The infrastructure is global – we just need to teach people how to use it properly.

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