Excellent idea! - Bill N3LLR -----Original Message----- From: "Joel Harrison" <w5zn@arrl.org> Subj: Thursday Night Topic - Commercial Exploitation of Amateur Radio Date: Sat May 30, 2009 9:46 am Size: 10K To: "arrl-odv" <arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org> The subjectofthe exploitation of Amateur Radio for commercial purposesis increasing and even became a topic of discussion during the FCC forumat Dayton in response toa question from the floor.This isboth a legal and ethical issue and one that is causing concern among ourmember ranks. General Counsel Imlay is continually confronted with this issue as is Dan Henderson and Dennis Dura. It hascome to the point that we need theBoard to address how far Amateur Radio should go in areas such as, for example, business restoration communications. Dave's editorial on this subject recently was a good intro to the subject, but there is a recent significant increase in issuesasnoted below, but this is far from the only one. After consultation with the Vice President's we have agreed that our scheduled Thursday evening topic will address this matter and will includea presentation from General Counsel Imlay and Dan Henderson. Chris willalso be addressing this in his written report to the board. Theexploitation of Amateur Radio for commercial purposes is now essentially in the hands of Amateurs themselves to draw the lines,however the VP's and I believe thisdeservesconsideration by youfora policy determinationand such has been requested by at least oneactive VC in Georgia. 73 Joel W5ZN Note Yellow Highlighted Text http://www.push-to-talk.org/disaster.htm Home The PUSH TO TALK ORGANIZATION gets the message Disaster preparedness/ emergency planning is a multi-faceted beast to conquer: Wireless carriers are notorious for domino type failuresduring even slight emergencies. Reduced dependency on them makes your operation hardened against communications loss. The federal, state and local agencies can commandeer the wireless carriers during an emergency but NOT yours or ours. Small or large; you need to "OWN a piece of the network"©. With PTT Digital you can do that. One-size DOES fit all with digital communications sinceall departments can have the same type of radio (translation: economies of scale= low cost). All facilities in a multi-campus operation can use the same radio type. Have multiple radio channels at one ormore of your facilities? Pool the resources and in case one fails the rest take up the load automatically...ask us HOW! Facilities can inter-operate for self-preservation during a crisis by Radio Over IP (RoIP) communications on your own Local Area or Wide Area networks. Assistance from one facility can be rapidly brought to another. Common "hailing" or all-call channels can be maintained separate from others. Radio systems designed to be in the same frequency band next to amateur radio "HAM" operators can cross-function and reach even more assistance. Radios can do double-duty when called upon and operate BOTH bands requiring a simple HAM license to use both frequencies (see www.arrl.org for more). Not a licensed HAM operator? There are LOTS of them out there that can operate the interlinks for you and there is NEVER a charge for the service.