Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeffhs
...their reasoning was that they were going to auction off the old analog TV channels for use by public service (police, fire, etc.) and cellular telephone services, claiming the airwaves were too jammed after communications failures during at least one major disaster (Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana five years ago)...
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The problem after Katrina was that the different civil authorities had no way to talk to each other, several systems were totally incapacitated and batteries could not be recharged. If anything crowded the airwaves it was the out-of-town agencies - not berating them, but think about a couple of hundred different police/fire/spca/etc. departments coming down all with their own radios.
Today, all of Louisiana's police and fire departments are on a trunked relay system. Most of the channels in the new trunked system are in bands already allocated for 2-way communications. They have also retained their old channels as emergency backup.
In short, any disaster or civil emergency will "clog" the airwaves. The implication that the extra bands would alleviate such situations is bunk. That's like sandbagging your house now because it may flood next March, or moving everything to the basement because you may get hit by a tornado one day.