My takeaway: Don't rely on 1 mode of communications, ever. In the fire company, we have AT LEAST three different ways to communicate, and if it's a large scale, we end up with 5 communications paths thanks to the county emergency communications truck.
(in case you're wondering -
1. 500 Mhz Motorola ASTRO digital trunked county radio system
2. 500 Mhz Conventional Analog (point to point) fallback
3. Cellular
4. Satellite Communications (they have a mini-earth station on the big command center, has Voice + Date + Local 500 Mhz Repeater intertie)
5. Landline. Yes, good old copper. Coax, actually. I found out that they can basically connect to any copper, and in a pinch, call in a giant spool of copper and just run a new line back to any existing (surviving?) point of the landline infrastructure. Amazing what you can do with 50,000 of twisted pair.
In mine country the kind of communication depends on the layer of command, but the system are based on the following options:
1. We have radio's with both trunk and direct modes. The direct mode does have very limited range, making it only suitable for use on a relative small scenes.
2. Lots of cellulars, depending on the public system.
3. Pagers
4. landlines both phone and fax
5. "noodnet" a independent landline system for emergency's, also both phone and fax. I did see some phones which didn't work because they didn't hook it on properly or somebody swapped the fax with the phone wires...
6. Internet. The new network based communication systems, but people still do not know how to get most out of it...
7. Satellite communication, but i doubt many people know how to use it. Really complex systems on the command unit, with about a dozen wireless hand units connected to a single base unit. I didn't get the manual...
With mine experiences, i have another lesson on communication: Don't forget to regularly test and train with backup systems!
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