Well sure! But given that it’s so important why reserve it for amateurs? Why isn’t a spectrum dedicated for use by police, fire, emergency response, and local governments who would be required to have the equipment on site and at least one person on staff trained to use it?
And then if you’re not within some reasonable distance to a HAM operator then you as a civilian can apply for a license so you have a way to reach emergency services.
Like this seems like a self defeating argument that HAM is crucial for emergency situations because if I agreed with you the logical thing to do would be to take it away.
> Why isn’t a spectrum dedicated for use by police, fire, emergency response, and local governments
There is, hams use a small fraction of the available frequencies and the FCC manages all frequencies in the USA to help commercial and non-commercial users share the available frequencies.
So taxis, commercial trucks, FRS radios, radar, fire, police, ambulance, marine radios, cell phones, CB radios, wifi, bluetooth, GPS, time sync services, etc all have allocations managed by the FCC. Similar organizations exist in most (all?) countries.
And then if you’re not within some reasonable distance to a HAM operator then you as a civilian can apply for a license so you have a way to reach emergency services.
Like this seems like a self defeating argument that HAM is crucial for emergency situations because if I agreed with you the logical thing to do would be to take it away.