If you're in Boston without phone service, use this website to call your family

No. Point-to-point communications over RF will work (unless they're jamming a very large range of the spectrum, but then there's probably bigger problems.) When you hear about repeaters, they're used to repeat the low-powered handheld VHF/UHF signal (~5W max) to a stronger signal so more people can hear it. Repeaters are controlled and maintained by volunteers and not the government. They don't even allocate fequencies for repeaters. Registering is voluntary and it's controlled by local frequency coordinators who are again just volunteers.

The FCC and the government takes a very hands off approach to Amateur Radio. They'd rather have them be self-patrolled than get involved. the only time the FCC really gets involved is when people transmit out of amateur bands or when someone transmits without a license, but even in those cases it's usually amateurs that initiate the action.

> surely they could order some sort of ham radio shutdown as well?

Yes and no, only to the extent that some hams would respect such an order. The practicality of actually preventing someone, especially a ham from broadcasting ^H^H^H communicating via a radio is a dubious prospect.

Handhelds (i.e. VHF/UHF, most likely 144MHz or 440MHz) will only work locally without additional equipment. If you have access to a repeater (which isn't a problem, as most are open) that's linked the internet then you can talk to anyone, either via the internet, or via a repeater (that's also connected to the internet) elsewhere.

HF (1.8 MHz - 30 MHz, in select bands) will propagate around the world if the conditions are right, just like shortwave radio. It's really the same thing, except lower power. That "if the propagation is right" is a big if, however, and also requires a large antenna. I also would not have wanted to set up a portable HF antenna in Boston this afternoon - even if perfectly legal, spreading out wire along the ground and throwing a wire up in a tree doesn't really sound like the best idea right now.

Of course, most of the time it's the HF stuff that's the most fun... and although somewhat reliable, and likely to get you talking to someone, somewhere fairly quickly, it's not going to let you talk to a specific person at a specific time with a lot of reliability, even if you've schedule things in advance.

You could also use a VHF/UHF handheld with an 18" whip antenna and access the FM repeater on the SO-50 satellites when it's passing by. The RF window for a pass is only about 10 minutes, but then you get some height behind your transmission.

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/sat_summary/so50.p...

That would be the test to get an entry level "technician" license.

The question pools are all posted online. If you remember basic physics from college, you can easily cram for the exam in an evening. (And if not, there's plenty of online lessons available to walk you through the material.)

Baofeng UV-3R or UV-5R. They aren't the most user friendly radios in the world, but they're cheap and put out decently clean signals. They're actually commercial radios, but they can transmit on the amateur bands. Note that they can also transmit and receive out of those bands, too.

There is no difference other than looks in all the variants that are out there (UV-5RA, UV-5R+, etc.)

Baofeng UV-5R. It's not a great first radio, but it is cheap.

Transceivers need not be large, consider the Baofeng UV-3R/5R or the Yaesu VX-3R. You can put them in your pocket (though I wouldn't transmit with it in there).

You also don't need high-power for long-distance work; the Elecraft KX3 almost fits in your pocket and only puts out 10W (it runs off of 8 AA cells), but many of its users report regular worldwide contacts. (Mine is in the mail, so I'll let you know.) The key is to have a decent antenna.

>if you think about the fact that many bombs are remotely-triggered using a cell phone. Kill the network, switch off additional bombs.

Okay, I'll see your cell network shutdown with a slight change to the bomb trigger logic. Now it they're triggered if they receive a trigger signal OR if they don't receive ANY signals for some time.

It's marketing, but it's not cynical marketing. It's the kind of marketing that should, in an ideal world, totally work. You prove you're a good, friendly company by doing good, friendly things.

It's marketing. However, it's awesome to see them spend money to help people directly, rather than on advertising or something like that.

Blue is a nice, calming color for a website or bikeshed.

By putting a big logo on the page, they are definitely trying to get some marketing mileage out of it.

Lot of disinformation spreading about this. All I know is my friends couldn't call their folks, so I wrote the app.

No idea what the diagnosis or prognosis on the situation is there - we'll keep it up until we hear all the telecom infrastructure is nominal.

My cell service has also worked all day. I'm a bit confused about the status of the network, but I've tried to keep off the phone for most of the day to avoid flooding it.

You can make free calls from GMail