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

225 Main Street

Newington, CT

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 Gulf Coast region. The quoted comments do not represent Motorola’s view on amateur radio. Motorola fully recognizes the incredible work that the amateur radio operator community has voluntarily put forth during the Hurricane Katrina response efforts, as well as many past disasters around the globe. We have more than 100 of our own employees who are amateur radios operators.

 

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