Has Amateur Radio Missed Out on Instant Messaging?

Earlier today, I was examining the various mobile phone service plans and “smart phones.” This caused me to reflect on how text messaging has become such a big deal in the mobile wireless world. Text messaging, more properly called  SMS (Short Message Service), supports simple text messages up to 160 characters. Even with a limited text length, much information gets passed using SMS, with usage rates exploding in recent years.

Twitter created a messaging system based on these short messages (actually limited to 140 characters to  fit into SMS with some margin). It wasn’t clear at first what the purpose of this system is, but people have figured out how to make use of it.

Other social networking systems, such as Facebook, have included SMS into their system, including sending status updates out via text messages. It turns out that you can do a lot with just 160 characters of plain text.

Ironically, amateur radio had the basic technology for a simple messaging system decades ago. This technology is packet radio or AX.25, a narrowband digital communications format that is ideal for sending short messages. This was a hot technology during the 1980’s and into the 1990’s. Later it faded into the background as the Internet delivered much faster digital pipes.  APRS (Amateur Packet Reporting System) revived interest in the mode in the past decade but remains a niche application in ham radio.

The APRS community has tried to take APRS main stream as a ubiquitous messaging system, but this has not gained wide adoption. Bob Bruninga WB4APR documented the Universal Text Messaging initiative on his web site. This is a nice piece of work. Bob argues correctly that we have quite a few different messaging formats that need to be tied together so they can be more effective.

What is standing in the way of a robust amateur radio messaging system? I think it  it is quite simple: the lack of a compelling mobile device for text messaging. While both Kenwood and Yaesu have incorporated APRS into their handheld radios (TH-D72, VX-8GR),  the emphasis seems to be on position reporting (GPS) and simple status messages. Neither of them have done anything innovative in the text message area, such as including a QWERTY keyboard or a touch screen user interface. Imagine a handheld radio based on the Android operating system…an open system that can be programmed by the amateur community. Being inherently digital, ICOM’s D-STAR radios had the opportunity to really nail this type of use but they have missed it so far.

There has been some fine work done using D-STAR to provide Instant Messaging (IM) capability. Most notably, the D-RATS software by Dan Smith KK7DS does a super job of integrating IM and email, using the ham bands along with the Internet. (D-RATS has many other features, too.) But to run D-RATS you need a computer attached to the radio….appropriate in some applications but missing the portability associated with the conventional HT or mobile phone.

A valid question is whether this really matters at all. Do we even need a ham radio instant messaging system? If we did, what would we use it for?  Applications that come to mind are: position reports, event announcements, DX spots, emergency pages, callsign lookup, repeater directory and, of course, casual chatting.  I suspect that once the capability is available the software gurus among us would apply it to applications that are beyond our current thinking. Actually, we know what hams like to “tweet” about…just monitor the high level of ham activity on Twitter. To really make this work, we’ll need some action from the equipment manufacturers.

That’s my thinking….what do you say?

73, Bob K0NR

One Reply to “Has Amateur Radio Missed Out on Instant Messaging?”

  1. I have felt exactly the same way about APRS messaging as you have mentioned here. We had the technology long before Twitter and Facebook, and long before we all carried cell phones with the capability. The reason I first got interested in amateur radio was because of the capabilities it had prior to their arrival to the mainstream population, or at least cheaper.

    In a high school class in the early 90’s autopatch was demonstrated to the class… this is during a time when none of the students would have been carrying cell phones like they are today. And amateur radio has continued, albeit sometimes slowly, in developing new technology.

    So why do these technological advances not move in to the mainstream faster? I guess I would lean towards saying it’s because not all technologically minded people are good at marketing their ideas, explaining how they work, making them simple to use, or putting them in to attractive packages.

    I have blogged several times about how difficult many things still are in amateur radio. If a person wants to set up a digipeater the instructions often start with finding an old Windows box, installing Linux, building the software, configuring a million settings and hoping it works.

    I’ve had similar thoughts of yours with SMS… what if there had been a simple amateur radio paging system that was very easy to use. How quickly might have a low cost system like that have taken off? Imagine not only it’s emergency communications use, but also it’s use with the family and last minute shopping lists 🙂

    Well, there are now, several very good APRS applications for the iPhone, but the problem is they use the cellular network to relay their information. The radio developers have resisted moving forward just due to the expense. I’ve got a Kenwood D7 and it’s great, but where are the new Kenwood radios with touch screens and color displays a la iPhone technology? Where is my small software defined radio with a color screen that has all of the various radio modes built in to it an easily upgradable?

    Oh yeah, they don’t exist.