[aprssig] Bandwidth IS THE FUTURE OF APRS

[Gregg Wonderly]

wa7nwp wrote:
> It's 2006.  We're still running 1200 baud  (nope - didn't forget the K 
> at the end of that -- hard to believe.)   We panic if somebody actually 
> adds an extra hop to their path.  Here we're counting fraking bytes in a 
> status packet.
> 
> We have incredible technology just waiting to be put to use.  We have 
> dozens of vastly underused channels.  We probably have Megabytes in the 
> Microwave spectrum that's dead dead dead.

This is the biggest issue.  There's only so much RF spectrum that can be used. 
Most of the wide spectrum is in the EHF/microwave and up part of our 
allocations.  So, in order to go "fast", we're going to have to move up in 
spectrum.  As Bob said about VHF->UHF, that implies path loss issues, which mean 
that there will have to be a lot more "digis", or very, very focused coverage 
areas.  This is not as trivial as it feels.

Gregg Wonderly