Let’s talk being able to talk when internet and cell phone service both go down

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot for the last year plus, and with the EFF coming out a number of days ago and strongly encouraging other people to think about it too, I thought it would be a good time to share my findings with all of you.

So here are three decent ways to have communications that keep working when both the internet AND cellphone networks go down.

1: AMATEUR RADIO, a.k.a. HAM Radio
the most capable but with the biggest barrier to entry

• THE GOOD: Longest range. Most flexible. Most capable.
• THE BAD: Difficult license. Relatively expensive equipment. Technically difficult. Unencrypted.
• THE COST: Highest of the three options here. Testing and licensing fees alone cost as much as the other options.

This isn’t going to be an option for most of you because you’re going to have to make time to study, take the qualifying exam to get a license (I’m KK7ZLU if you have one), purchase that license, then purchase a radio and antenna(s) you need and yes those are separate, and get it all set up if you want long-range communications.

On the plus side, this is filled with people who already know what they’re doing. So if you’re good at tests and have the money and time to take all the steps? Great! Please do it! The more the merrier.

2: FRS AND/OR GMRS RADIO
surprisingly capable least-effort handheld radios

• THE GOOD: REAL easy to get started, particularly FRS. GMRS can be leveraged to extend range. Trivially easy to use.
• THE BAD: GMRS requires a license, but there’s no test and it’s trivial to get. Unencrypted.
• THE COST: Probably the cheapest option. You can buy three-packs of FRS radios for like $60 and they’re fine. GMRS radios are more expensive, how much depends upon how powerful a radio you buy.

Okay, so, you want a modern walkie-talkie, and not junk? Something with some range? And maybe with a base station that sits in your house or car? But you don’t want to have to study for a license examination?

Welcome to the overlapping worlds of FRS and GMRS.

FRS (‘Family Radio Service’) and GMRS (‘General Mobile Radio Service’) are two separate but very compatible radio standards. The radios – typically hand-held – have numbered channels, many of which are used by both kinds of radio. By using them together, you improve both.

Using them is very simple: pick a channel, push the button to talk, then let off the button and listen for a reply. Done.

So: how are they different?

First, GMRS radios are much more powerful – and so longer-range – than FRS radios.

Second, GMRS radios can use “repeaters,” which are automated radios that can pick up your signals and resend them over a much larger area. I can from home talk to people across much of western Washington State because of these repeaters.

Third, Because of these two features, GMRS radios require a license, whereas FRS radios do not. But there is NO test for this license. No studying, no prep, no examination. You just buy one online, and you can do it tonight if you want. Once you have bought the license, your whole family can use it. It costs $35 for 10 years. (I’m WSLT671.)

By contrast, FRS radios can be used by literally anyone, INCLUDING SMALL CHILDREN. There are several families around here who have bought sets of FRS radios for their kids. I know this because I pick them up all the time on my GMRS base station. It’s like hearing neighbour kids play over the fence or down the block.

So how does using them together improve both?

In general, GMRS licensees have more technical leeway than FRS users. FRS radios have small, simple antennas you are not allowed to modify, which limits their range. With GMRS radios, you can buy – or even make – much better antennas.

Between the better antennas and the higher power, having GMRS on one end of any conversation extends the effective range of the FRS radios you’re talking to. Using GMRS on shared channels lets you both hear and talk to FRS users from further away.

E.g., in hilly terrain, you’ll be lucky to get one and a half to two miles with FRS alone. But with GMRS on one end and FRS on the other, you can get eight miles or more even in bad conditions. Under ideal conditions, 30 miles is not impossible. Two FRS users may not be able to talk to each other at the same time at those sorts of distances, but if they can both talk to the GMRS station, the GMRS user can pass messages along.

In short: having a GMRS radio in the mix makes FRS radios better, extending their range, sometimes dramatically, which means fewer licenses, cheaper radios, and better access in the short run.

Finally:

3: TEXT OVER RADIO
LoRa digital text radios

• THE GOOD: No license of any kind. The longest range of anything without a license. Messages are encrypted. Text-based, so more comfortable for some. Public and private texting, with restricted-access channels. Tremendous range with repeaters – CascadiaMesh extends from the southern Oregon border up through Kamloops and northern Vancouver Island.
• THE BAD: Text only. Very new, so very much in flux. There are two common communications standards and applications to go along with them: MeshCore and Meshtastic. And they are NOT compatible – they do NOT talk to each other – which means different areas are settling on one or the other. Documentation for setup is mid and usability is “yep, sure is for nerds,” a comment which I’m told is also for nerds. What that means is that getting set up and using it may dismay some people, but will particularly dismay the nontechnical who will absolutely need handholding.
• THE COST: Middle ground, closer to the cheaper end. If you use a companion device with an existing tablet, cell phone, or computer, think $60 for each. You may be able to make your own if you’re that kind of person, though that’s only ever really worth it for repeaters.

LoRa is a kind of digital two-way radio being used here for texts. If you want to be able to text across long distances when both the internet and cell phones are down, this is a good way to do it, as long as everyone involved has LoRa devices. (LoRa texting does NOT work with regular cell phone texting, in the same way that Discord doesn’t work with it either. It is an entirely separate thing.)

There are LoRa devices that bundle all the functionality into one piece of equipment, and also LoRa “companion” devices with LoRA transmitters inside which work with software on a computer, phone, or tablet.

An example of a dedicated device is the LilyGo T-Deck. If you remember Blackberry devices, it looks like a Blackberry device. But instead of using cell phone services or the internet, it’s just directly talking over radio. No cell service, no internet: just radio.

An example of a “companion” device is the WishMesh Tag. It’s a rectangle about the size of a debit card, but thicker. If you turn its GPS receivers off, it’ll run a solid four, maybe five days on a single charge. You connect your phone, tablet, or computer to it via bluetooth using special software (the previously-mentioned MeshCore or Meshtastic) and run the accompanying app to send and receive encrypted text messages with individuals or groups.

Again: even though it can work on a cell phone, NONE OF THIS REQUIRES INTERNET OR CELL SERVICE. The “phone” isn’t being used as a cellphone here, it’s being used as a small computer that has bluetooth.

In much of the US, the most commonly used software is Meshtastic. Here in Cascadia, MeshCore (download at https://meshcore.io ) is the standard, and it is a very large area network. It seems to work better than Meshtastic does in our mountainous geography, which is why everyone switched.

Both are open source, although closed-source/commercial versions also exist.

Unfortunately, as above, the two packages don’t cross-communicate! So you want to find out what’s most common in your area and use that one, whatever it happens to be.

What do I recommend? Glad you asked.

Being me, I’ve got all three options listed here up and running. I’m just like that; if I can have a contingency plan, I will have a contingency plan; my noise in fiction about how “Sombra always has a plan” is straight-up me.

But that’s not the answer you’re looking for. The answer really depends upon what people are already using around you, because it’s easier to join an existing network than make a new one. But if you’re somewhere all three are active, or somewhere none of them are active, my answer is conditional:

• If you’re working with people who have no technical background AND you don’t care about encryption, then option two, GMRS/FRS radios.
• If you’re dealing with people who like new digital toys OR you care about encryption, then option three, LoRa radio text. You can even set up your own repeaters just about as easily as you can set up a companion device. Seeed makes a repeater that comes with an onboard solar panel and is as close to set-up-and-forget as you’re going to get. As things like this go, they’re not very expensive, and the battery life is generally kind of insane. They sip power, not guzzle it.

So basically, now’s a real good time to reach out to the kind of people you’d want to be able to reach regardless. Get a conversation going amongst the willing and interested, settle amongst yourselves on at least one of these, then set up and actually use it until you know it works and you’re comfortable with how it works.

After all – you never know what kind of emergency might happen, or when. And the time to be ready is beforehand, not during… when you won’t have the time to get comfortable with anything.