Per Motorola’s request, I am
forwarding you this email.
Harold Kramer, WJ1B
Chief Operating Officer
ARRL - The National Association for
Amateur Radio
860 594 0220
From: Madsen Jeffrey
D.-QA9968 [mailto:Jeffrey.Madsen@motorola.com]
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2005
3:47 PM
To: Kramer, Harold, WJ1B; Pitts,
Allen W1AGP
Cc: Illman Dick-CHAW03; BUCHWALD
GREG-AGB002
Subject: Motorola Apology: ARRL
Board of Directors
September 12, 2005
Mr. Harold Kramer
Chief
OperatingOfficer
c/o Board of Directors
Amateur Radio Relay
League
06111-1494
To the ARRL Board of
Directors:
Motorola has been reading from
several hundred amateur radio operators about their disappointment with a
comment made in the Sept. 6 edition of the Wall Street Journal. We have
already responded to many operators individually. Some operators
have accepted it. Others have not. Today, we offer this public
apology to the ARRL Board of Directors:
Motorola apologizes for the way Jim
Screeden's comments appeared in the story. His comments were quoted out
of context. Jim was focusing on Motorola’s massive public safety
recovery effort in the
In our going-forward efforts , we
will continue to highlight the unique capabilities that
public safety communications and amateur radio operators bring to dealing with
natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina:
-- Public Safety communication solutions
are designed and built to be robust and reliable in MOST circumstances. Katrina
was so devastating that many of our customers’ systems could not
withstand the effects. Katrina now ranks as the single largest disaster
recovery effort in Motorola’s 77-year history. Motorola has more than 300
people working in the impacted areas, has shipped more than 22,000 pieces of
equipment, and is working 24/7 to fully restore both public safety radio
customers and even non-customers. Jim Screeden is directing much of our
activity. We are keeping his efforts focused on Katrina.
-- Amateur radio communications benefit us
all by having a distributed architecture and frequency agility that enables you
to set up faster in the early phases of disaster recovery and can provide
flexible and diverse communications. The WSJ story did a wonderful job of
depicting that. Motorola believes that the amateur radio spectrum provides
valuable space for these important communications.
Amateur radio operators have a long
history of using our equipment, and our own amateur radio operators within
Motorola have contributed many of our technical advances. As demonstrated our
cooperation with amateur radio for the Powerline LV test at ARRL headquarters
(http://www.arrl.org/pio/press_releases/2005/0523.html), Motorola values its
relationship with amateur radio and respects the critical and unique work your
community is doing to help with the Katrina recovery efforts.
Motorola appreciates the work the amateur
radio operator community is voluntarily putting forth during Katrina and the
recovery efforts.
We hope we can focus together on assisting
those who presently need it most ... those impacted by Hurricane Katrina.
We are sorry.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey D. Madsen
Director, Communications & Public
Affairs
Motorola, Inc.
Government & Enterprise Mobility
Solutions