Problems with the Swatch project
Ed Mitchell, KF7VY, publishes one of the world's most popular amateur radio web sites, Ham Radio Online at http://hamradio-online.com. He has been licensed since the early 1970s and has been involved in many aspects of ham radio, including HF, VHF, UHF, satellites, ARES/RACES, packet radio, ATV, and much more. Professionally, he has worked in the computer engineering field for 18 years. He is a member of the ARRL, AMSAT, SETILeague and the IEEE.
Problems with the Swatch project
This reflects my general thoughts in that I believe SWATCH's marketing department was merely stupid and ignorant of reality and perhaps this could be recovered by SWATCH into an "Ooops... we better apologize and do something good for Amateur Radio". However, the type of operation contemplated by SWATCH violates ITU and national regulations in many different ways, not just the commercial aspects.
It is hard to imagine that during what must have taken six months or more of negotiations and contract executions between SWATCH and the Russian Space Agency, the legal issues of this never came up. They had a lot of time to understand the issues.
Regardless of the commercial or non-commercial nature there are other problems with the SWATCH project:
- the ITU has a prohibition on third party traffic (except where agreements exist between countries) of the type planned by SWATCH, regardless of whether it is commercial or not, in nature.
- broadcasting on Amateur frequencies is prohibited by the national laws of most countries.
- the SWATCH web site does not mention Amateur Radio. They claim, instead, to be launching the their Beatnik satellite which will use 145.8 to 146.0 MHz output.
- Even if this were to be turned into non-commercial messages, the use of Amateur satellite and Amateur frequencies in this manner is clearly beyond the realm of reasonable. If SWATCH can set up an ad campaign around this theme, and, SWATCH can use Amateur frequencies to transmit non-commercial messages as a matter of "Good will" - where does it stop? Imagine if other companies adopt this scheme - collecting non-commercial messages in association with the marketing of a new product and transmitting them from satellite (or even just on any amateur band, particularly above 420 MHz where one way transmissions are legal for other than remote control). In effect, Amateur satellite frequencies can be legally commandeered for use by corporations engaged in bona fide marketing activities. And that would be the end of the use of Amateur satellite frequencies by Amateurs.
Ed Mitchell, KF7VY