When everything else fails, amateur radio will still be there and thriving
When everything else fails because a massive catastrophe has hit your local area, even something as big as a 9.2 earthquake destroying most of California... Everything satellite based (that is not dependent on teleports in CA) will still function fine. Amateur radio is nice and all for voice communication, but for IP data you could still use:<p>a) C, Ku and Ka-band VSAT terminals via geostationary satellite, to earth station anywhere else in the same hemisphere. Example: 1.2m VSAT in CA, teleport in TX.<p>There are all sorts of mobile VSAT systems including auto-aim&#x2F;auto tracking antennas and military grade ones that will fit into a large backpack.<p>b) Handheld satellite phones: Iridium phones will work fine after a huge clusterfuck disaster. And run on a lot less power than a ham radio rig. They use a LEO satellite network. The Inmarsat iSatphone talks to the I-4 series of geostationary satellites and will work fine.<p>c) Portable L and S-band laptop sized Inmarsat terminals (BGAN), again speaking to the I-4 series satellites. These are about the size of a fat laptop and also require a lot less power than a ham radio setup. Speeds from 100 to 500 kbps depending on spot beam capacity&#x2F;utilization and TDMA contention ratio. Some have built in wifi hotspots, others have a 100BaseTX interface to plug in your own router.<p>You can do all sorts of useful VoIP tricks with Iridium and Inmarsat satellite phones - both services offer regular US NPA DIDs that ring on your phone, and it&#x27;s easy to set up a phone with a short 50 ohm coaxial cable to an exterior roof antenna if you need to semi-permanently install one on the desk of an indoor command center&#x2F;disaster relief comms post.<p>edit: The major use of geostationary satellite in a disaster is to repair and bring back online a broken&#x2F;islanded TCP&#x2F;IP network. You can show up to a completely off-net command center (for example: Disaster operations HQ for City of San Francisco) and bring it back online to the outside world by parking a 1 to 2 meter sized VSAT dish on the roof and connecting a satellite modem to the WAN uplink of their router. Satellite serves a different and complementary purpose to ham radio which is almost purely analog voice in a disaster scenario. Two people can carry the equipment needed to bring a 5 Mbps x 5 Mbps pipe with 0.0% packet loss.