Ladies & Gentlemen: At yesterday's House Session, immediately before HR 555 was passed, the House of Representatives passed HR 588, Securing Access to Networks in Disasters Act. The bill provides funding to the FCC to study ways to improve the reestablishment of broadband networks specifically following a natural disaster. https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/hr588/BILLS-115hr588ih.xml. Since disaster communications is part of our world, I draw your attention to the proposed bill for several reasons. 1. ARRL ought to be a natural candidate for participating in the study by the FCC which the bill is funding. Our subject matter expertise would enhance any research. In addition, we ought to claim a seat at the table merely to oversee our own interest here. 2. There will undoubtedly be funding via grants or RFP's since no government agency actually performs this kind of work: it's delegated to contractors. I believe ARRL's Lab might be a qualified contractor. As Frank McCarthy points out: we're better known now in Congress. 3. The Amateur Radio community already has some practical experience in building pop-up broadband networks using 2.4 MHz and higher devices. ARRL author, Glen Popiel, KW5GP published the definitive handbook on amateur mesh networks as recently as April 2016. 4. Emergency and disaster communications is quickly evolving away from analog voice to high speed data, as the sponsor of this bill has made clear, and participation in the process would enable us to keep pace with the changes. 5. And finally, the development of self-contained, plug and play, readily available and reliable HSMM-capable equipment from vendors like Ubiquiti has accelerated over the last two years and driven down the cost of creating these networks on a large scale. It is much easier and cheaper to create a HSMM mesh node than even three years ago. For these reasons, I have asked ARRL Laboratory manager, Ed Hare to evaluate on a preliminary basis the role which ARRL might play in the FCC research project and to enlist the assistance of Lab volunteer, Martin Ewing, AA6E. Dr. Ewing's experience with IT networks at Yale's Astronomy Department and his familiarity with grant applications would be helpful. I've asked Ed to report back his preliminary recommendations by next month's end. When they are available I will share them with you. By way of history, HSMM mesh has been suggested before as a network resiliency aid several years ago following Hurricane Sandy when New York City experienced wide-spread failure of commercial broadband networks. At the time, Senator Ron Wyden (D. OR) suggested that a National High Tech Response Team be created to deal with these kinds of failures. His initiative was publicized in The Wall Street Journal OP-ED on 11/27/12 entitled "Time for A High Tech Version of the National Guard" http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323330604578143073045710876 to which I responded, and the Journal also published, that we already have a high tech response team: 700,000 hams http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323901604578157180648688160. Wyden's proposal didn't get much traction from Congress or the administration at the time, but it appears with the passage of HR 588 that interest has been rekindled. This would appear to be an opportunity. Gallagher 1/24/17