Back to basics

Nov 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Donny Jackson

ON THE CUTTING EDGE

On the surface, easy-to-use VoIP applications might appear to be the biggest threat to amateur radio because they also enable low-cost global voice communications.

One person who does not believe this to be the case is the “Godfather of VoIP,” Jeff Pulver. The chairman and founder of pulver.com and developer of multiple VoIP-related entities, Pulver is an avid ham operator who believes the camaraderie associated with amateur radio cannot be replaced by any other technology, including VoIP.

“I really don't think that one is disruptive to the other, just like television did not put radio out of business and the advent of the Internet did not put TV out of business,” Pulver said.

But amateur-radio operators often are some of the first to experiment with new communications technologies. In fact, when Pulver first started in Internet telephony in 1995, he said 20% of the participants used their ham-radio call signs as their online aliases. And Pulver's amateur-radio experience has impacted his VoIP development efforts in other ways, he said.

“I'm a bottom-up community person,” Pulver said. “And the success I've had in nurturing and helping grow the voice-over-IP industry I directly relate to my childhood and longtime commitment to amateur radio because [of] the feeling of commitment and feeling of community I understood and grew from. I apply that same spirit to what I do every day.”

Although some contend that the existence of well-funded research-and-development labs for commercial communications companies limits the value of individual work, Pulver believes it is important that the FCC continue to provide spectrum that encourages individuals to experiment with communications. In particular, the “white spaces” in the TV band (see “FCC makes first decision on ‘white spaces’ spectrum” on our Web site: www.mrtmag.com) would be an ideal setting for such work.

Intrado's Meer echoed the sentiment, noting the need for spectrum pioneers could use to develop “new, wild ideas” in communications.

“I worry about the amount of research that's going on or not going on,” Meer said. “We don't really have the kind of raw scientific development that we had during the Cold War, or even in times before that.”

Meanwhile, the amateur-radio community continues to use its existing spectrum to experiment with the latest technological breakthroughs beyond traditional long-distance, analog voice communications, ARRL's Sumner said.

“That's just a small part of what hams are doing,” Sumner said. “What we're doing with software-defined radio and with different digital protocols really does extend the capabilities of today's amateur radio stations well beyond what our predecessors could do.”