There's plenty of alternatives to amateur bands for backup communications. ZigBee and LoRA networks/repeaters, amateur WiFi in ISM, Starlink, GSM radios, modems over POTS lines, etc. Ham really is a solution looking for a problem. I was very interested in Ham and in college spent some time in the Ham club but even then, before LTE everywhere and smartphones, it was obvious that GSM could eat Ham's lunch. These days with smartphones I don't even bother. I have a GMRS setup I keep at home to tackle some dead spots in our area or to talk to my partner when I'm working in the garage (and as a backup in case of power outages), which works good enough for our purposes.

Ham these days really is a solution looking for a problem. Probably its biggest advantage these days is how easy it is to get cheap, used ham equipment compared to some of the alternatives.

> There's plenty of alternatives to amateur bands for backup communications. ZigBee and LoRA networks/repeaters, amateur WiFi in ISM, Starlink, GSM radios, modems over POTS lines, etc.

In an actualy emergency, there really isn't an alternative. Ham is remarkable in that you can communicate around the world from a 100% self-contained system. You and the other party just need your own equipment and power (generator, etc) and there is no dependency on anything else. Every other solution has multiple (sometimes dozens if not hundreds) of third parties in the dependency chain, if any one of them is down, there's no communication channel.

It doesn't take too much for such emergencies to happen. Hurricane Maria in 2017 knocked out essentially all communications in Puerto Rico for a long time (many months in more remote unreachable areas, a week or more even in the city).

Satellite phones work, if you have one and an active plan. But that's so expensive approximately nobody does. Ham though, works standalone, free.

Repeaters fail too. And the solar cycle has been at a low for the past few years for HF, but if you can wait until 2025, it's going to be amazing!! ;-)

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression

Apologies for such a noob, basic question, but doesn’t Ham radio equipment also rely on the same power that normal personal electronics use? I guess I don’t know why Ham radio is immune from power outages.

I think the parent's point is that there's a lot of cellular infrastructure that needs power (and connectivity) for cellular communication to work. Point-to-point radio only needs power at either end, and when your radio runs on 13.8VDC, there are many convenient sources available.

Sort of. Most ham radio equipment bigger than a handheld (ham's call them HTs) use 12V DC. So in a hurricane you could literally rip a battery out of a car and power your radio for a few hours, maybe even days if you are careful. This leads to wide compatibility for power sources across a large majority of ham radio equipment.

12V DC is easy to build yourself and is a world wide standard for many things, including amateur radio. There's tons of videos on how to build a 12v battery pack out of commodity batteries for whatever chemistry you are interested in, (LIPO, lead acid, and lithium are common).

It's also popular target for portable solar arrays. You could buy something the size of a picnic blanket and rolls up. Add the solar that outputs 12 dc to a build a 12v battery pack (18650s and 21600s are common) and be able to be on the radio for hours a day, even in pretty challenging conditions.

Generally running a ham radio off of whatever you can find around is much easier than normal equipment because most consumer electronics expect AC (which is harder from batteries, requiring an inverter) of a certain voltage (depending on use case and country) or they have a power cube that has a custom voltage and amperage requirements that changes for each piece of consumer equipment.

USB is helping in this area, it's increasingly common and finding battery packs or solar cells that output USB compatible power is getting easier. But even today there's many logistical challenges, things like connectors (Microusb, mini-usb, usb-c), smarts (usb master, usb client, usb2go, etc), power limitations (different cables and power cubes have different max power), physical connector issues (like say Apple's phones), and various non standard additions to get more than 5V @ 1 amp over a "USB" cable. Wireless charging for phones is a morass of compatibility issues and the "USB" supplies for the chargers often use proprietary signaling, and despite the usb connector use non standard protocols and voltages.

USB is generally more fragile and less flexible than 12v DC. It's much easier for instance to run 4 radios off a single 12V supply than it is to run 4 usb devices off a single USB power source. USB is also trickier, you need for instance some smarts to connect a USB device to a car's 12v battery, granted those parts are common.

Ham equipment also seems quite large and bulky, based off every stock photo I’ve seen online, so I’m not quite sure how useful it’d be in a situation like an earthquake where you’d have to evacuate a building and take your possessions out by hand.

Hand hands that are half as tall as your phone and 2-3x as thick are common. As our units designed to be installed in cars. Both can connect direct to other radios (usually on 2M or 70cm bands) or to repeaters (which are quite common).

Having the closest few dozen repeaters programmed in is common, that way you can have a few for the closest dozen or so metro areas and often includes a state wide repeater network. Having access to these networks can provide a wealth of information from a device is easily hand held, can be worn on a belt, and still works even when the cell towers die. As texas learned, even just a cold spell can have significant impact on the power grid, which of course the cellular network depends on.

If you are having severe weather, fire, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc the ham radio networks typically get really active, people working hard to spread useful information. Often have friends/family/connections to local fire fighters, doctors, nurses, etc that have a really good idea of what's actually going on and how the local services are responding to those challenges. Might want to try listening in on a local emergency net (you can listen to amateur radio legally in the USA without a license).

When comparing what the local TV station broadcasts (and sends out over social media) to the local hams, I've found the ham based info to be significantly more accurate and timely. The news station seems to be focusing on the drama of it all.

True, but there are portable ones for shorter ranges.

I feel like at this point we’re really narrowing down the field of potential people to help out in event of an earthquake.

my radio is about the same size of car radio. in fact it is meant to be mounted in car.

YAESU - FT-857D

Probably a lot easier to run a starlink node off a car battery than to use HAM radio in those situations.

Unboxing starlink was a transformative experience for me. It was a weird feeling literally getting internet in a box without cable, copper or DSL or even a rural dish pointed at a local tower where you have to worry about obstacles. I plopped the dish on the dirt and it just frikkin worked. It was at that moment I realized how that technology will absolutely transform global society. I'm from Africa and now do philanthropy in rural areas out there, and it's going to take a minute, but it's going to absolutely transform regions like that.

Traceroute over starlink, see if you can figure out where your uplink station is, and how far it is from you. From what I can tell the range is much more than cellular, but not all that much as far as worrying about hurricanes, large fires, and major power grid problems.

Seems like there was a failure just recently. Something about Facebook's BGP route?