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Why Did The Cellular Networks Have Problems?
from the aftermath dept
A ton of articles over the weekend have been focusing on the question of why did the mobile phone networks have so many problems during the blackouts. The most basic answer is that the networks were simply overloaded, with everyone trying to make phone calls at once. In fact, while some article said that landlines fared better - personally, I had just as much trouble getting through to people on landlines as I did on cellular lines. The other problem is that many of the cell sites lost power. One interesting side effect, is that people were swamping pay phone booths - which most people have been writing off as a completely dead technology. The best comment I heard (can't remember where...) was imagine what would have happened if folks like Verizon had already converted all their payphones into WiFi station when all those wandering Manhattan-ites needed to make phone calls. Of course, had they been equipped with Voice-over-WiFi phones, then maybe we'd be hearing about how those lines were swamped too.
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The wi-fi AP's were down as well. I checked it out. It was the first time I ever did a scan in Manhattan and did not see 1 AP!
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Verizon and LG...
My LG phone running on Verizon plain crashed during the blackout and I couldn't even shut it down to reboot until I pulled the battery out (or it dies on it's own). Of course putting it back in set it back into the "crashed" mode where it would go into a serious busy loop (and eat up battery in under an hour).
Sounds like a great plan for Verizon, if there is an emergency we are the ostrich of the phone world... or maybe LG should be making that claim.
Amusing to see a phone behave like Windows 3.0 when something is not perfect. Best part was calling their support line and getting "We are sorry but we don't 'think' other customers are having similar problems".
Whle we as a country worry about the power grid's future imporvements, the corporations affected should be thinking about how they should improve their incapacitation if power goes out. But then again who am I kidding, corporations don't need to spend any money unless there is money to be made in the long run.
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