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Comment by Tergmap | Hacker News Reader

It would make much more sense if the mobile phone operators offered free mobile data access.

It is messy to make changes to router settings to most users.

But then everybody would use that (like people living in tents now) and would probably overload the network. The landline internet connections have a higher capacity totally.

I can't talk about Italy but this does not hold true to deployments in Austria. In particular first responders would be able to get more reliable internet via LTE than local wifi. First of all because LTE can do per device QoS, secondly because LTE antennas have better backhaul connections than most homes would have access to.

ISPs here do not upgrade customers automatically unless they pay which means many users stay on very slow internet for a long time.

Or we cannot get better access. I'm in Melbourne suburbs and can only get shocking ADSL1.

I love NZ ;). I'm on 200/200mbit fibre and I heard a rumor my city is going to be come a giga-city soon. Bring on 1gbps internet at home!

I always wonder why the home needs such high bandwidth. What are using all that bandwidth for?

For me it's about being able to ignore the lack of QoS. My wife is streaming an HD movie, our 3 iDevices start downloading some new update that just came out, I'm on Skype and doing research, it's all completely seamless, everything blows ahead at full speed.

Oh I see, even if the link quality is crap. You have the high enough bandwidth to recover.

Also my bet is that the LTE network still doesn't have the capacity of the 3G network, that's why people are being migrated slowly

But still undersubscribed, that's why you get a better connection (beyond the tech advancements)

While in most big cities there's a good LTE coverage, in that area no major provider has an LTE network at all.

I don't know about Italy but in many places 3G has better speeds than landlines - in Australia, my parents live rurally and can choose between 3G, 56K, or satellite

> I can't talk about Italy

Then (most respectfully) don't :) That area in central Italy is mountainous, not particularly significant from an industrial perspective, and hence poorly covered by wireless data networks, whereas ADSL is pretty ubiquitous.

Austria is far more mountainous than Italy. But what doesn't add up is that only the bigger cities there have proper LTE coverage, the small towns only G3 or G2. But even G3 would be better than the WiFi on broken 2Mb copper cables in the earth.

But the point is that G3 will saturate and cannot be used at the same time as you talk, so any additional connection is welcome.

Yes, but my point was that with an earth quake (>6 richter) the copper earth lines will likely be more broken than slow G3 air lines.

Nope, not in Italy. Here with 3G you can barely load google on mobile (at least, that is my case). If I don't see an H+ on my phone I don't even bother to try going online.

I think shortwave (and a strong group of local hams ahead of time) is a possibly better approach

The hams in my area are routinely involved with disasters big and small. They've responded quickly in disasters with volunteer patrols and stations. They routinely help out at events like marathons, fairs, and more. When a fire took down a place's cell towers, they were there to facilitate communication. When the 911 call system went offline, they were around the city to help out (i.e., could place direct emergency calls for folks)

That'd be great for a subset of the reasons you might need actual data connectivity. Not sure you can download maps and whatnot over ham...

Ehhh, I'm gonna have to disagree on the HF bit. Ham modes haven't kept up with the times: there needs to be a good and flexible HF packet system in place to enable scale. PACTORIII is proprietary garbage and Winlink seems to be just for email? And neither is very widespread anyway.

Short range, "walkie-talkie" stuff is fine but when you move up to the regional level, it's going to be a super bottleneck. Unfortunately, the majority of hams seem to be content to just do contesting using SSB or CW. There needs to be a huge, directed push to innovate here.

VHF or UHF to your local internet-connected repeater tower would work fine. It doesn't need to be HF.

Towers can have battery backup, and even in a wide-scale disaster, chances are one of them would maintain an internet connection.

HAMs are great but imagine if everyone had a shortwave transmitter after a disaster - if 4G networks can't handle the traffic, amateur radio would be pure noise. Getting wifi and mobile data working means everyone has a shot at communicating

If you could funnel local traffic into more sparsely distributed HF packet-based transceivers, it might not be too bad. You wouldn't be relaying general Internet traffic, just disaster related info. Think 1990's web form for family contacts and medical status.

We haven't had the need to use local HAM's in our emergency response system. I wonder though, are they trained on the incident command system(ICS)?

In the US at least there is ARES/RACES, and many cities/areas have some kind of liaison, periodic net checkins or drills, lightweight training, etc., so that hams can work effectively with the local incident response.

But the whole point of this is to remove some load from the mobile network, which is probably overloaded.

Keep in mind that area isn't covered by LTE yet, and probably hasn't a robust mobile network like in the big cities.

As far as I understood there were serious issues with telcos.

The earthquake affected the infrastructure, and being a mountain area it's hard to get close enough to fix it.

There's a tradeoff between sending helicopters to save people vs repairing the telco infra.

>It is messy to make changes to router settings to most users.

Well, I'm sure for the sake of victims of a natural disaster, it might be prudent to wade through that mess if there's a chance it'll help. Who knows, the users might learn a thing or two.

I don't see why mobile phone operators couldn't offer free mobile data access in addition to this measure.

Not to mention not secure.

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