1. I love me some speedy Internet
2. It shows how far Amateur Radio is behind the times

OpenCape states on their “About us” page that:

The Cape, Islands and South Coast are the most vulnerable region in Massachusetts to natural disaster, such as a hurricane. Additionally, the region’s proximity to the Plymouth nuclear power plant adds to the region’s overall disaster risk. One of the lessons from Katrina and other major disasters is that communication infrastructure is key to both response and recovery.

Cape Cod lacks the robust and redundant system of communications it will need to respond to and recover from a natural or man-made disaster. Not only will the OpenCape network perform a daily economic role, but it will also serve as the redundant communications backbone in times of emergency.

This is eerily familiar to me as a south coastal Massachusetts amateur radio operator, as I’ve heard this same exact statement time and time again from people involved in Emergency Communications out on the Cape. There is no real link back to the rest of the state from the Cape and Islands. However, lets compare and contrast:

Faced with the same problem two groups came up with different solutions:

1. Establish a “robust, high capacity communications infrastructure” both wired and wireless across the Cape
2. Establish a 1200 baud VHF connection with WinLink.

I seem to be busting this out a lot lately:

OK, this isn’t a strict apples-to-apples comparison. I understand that the projects here are slightly different. OpenCape’s projected cost it $40 million while I’m sure the WinLink connection cost probably well under 0.1% of that. However, it demonstrates a disconnect between Amateur Radio and what the current environment is like for data connections. Today, everything short of my toaster is IP based. Existing infrastructure using IP is everywhere. What is Amateur radio still continuing to focus on? Kludges that keep bolting things on top of an outdated protocol that isn’t suited for today’s networks and then additional kludges to connect it back to the rest of the world.

OpenCape says that “Letters of support have been received from every town… Cape Cod and the Islands, police and fire chiefs associations…” which makes me wonder what exactly is going on out there. Are we squandering a valuable opportunity for deploying HSMM links on an intra and inter-town basis? While I’m not a fan of the “EmComm for the sake of EmComm” that a lot of ARES and RACES folks fall into, this would be a great way to “sell” amateur radio. If someone said to a Cape Cod based fire/police/EMA “Hey, I think I can give you an IP link off cape for short money that would continue to work during a disaster” I’d be shocked if there were no interest. If that goes well, what about then start setting up a mesh network between towns? Part 97 gives us tremendous leeway on 2.4GHz and there is ways to upgrade consumer equipment for cheap money. For the love of pete, how can we not do this?

Instead of keeping up with the times we are focusing on our 1200 baud links and getting left in the dust while people are beating us with better designed data networks. Data networks that are designed to work during disasters. Then, we wonder why the hobby is suffering.