Cellphone Networks Survive Inauguration, Mostly 121
nandemoari writes "Everybody was talking about Barack Obama's inauguration on Tuesday morning, and it showed. According to reports, a number of mobile phone networks faced overload circumstances that day until late afternoon, when the chat sessions finally began to dissipate.
Having the most trouble that morning appears to have been T-Mobile, and AT&T also had some difficulty that morning."
Shhh! (Score:5, Insightful)
If they don't ask why the service isn't getting better but the prices are getting higher, they'll never suspect that we'd rather hoard cash instead of reinvesting it! Teeheeheehee!
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Sincerely,
That company that would charge you $5000 to send an MP3 over SMS
Re:I would say mitigated (Score:4, Insightful)
If they had survived service would not have been interrupted based in normal use, not a reduction
I don't think 2M people in a few square miles all texting, pic/vid messaging, and calling is "normal use".
Mitigating [merriam-webster.com] any *major* issues brought about with extreme usage is survival, to me.
Re:Improving networks (Score:5, Insightful)
the real problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Unmissable revenue opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
As for the content.... more does not mean better. Having millions sending vids and pics shot with crappy cellphone lenses was hardy of benefit. A few real camera crews with real cameras provided all the really useful (ie worth viewing) material.
Re:Verizon (Score:2, Insightful)
Um, couldn't you just buy your own device and use whatever carrier you want?
Not from the U.S., I take it?
Where's the motivation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Improving networks (Score:1, Insightful)
red herring. if thats true than explain why cell service is as crappy in Manhattan than in bumsticks OK.
Re:I would say mitigated (Score:3, Insightful)
There weren't even close to 2 million people. In fact it's unclear if the Obama inauguration even surpassed the record of 1.2 million previously set by Lyndon Johnson. This smells just like the "Million Man March", more media perpetuated bullshit.
Re:I would say mitigated (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Improving networks (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do people assume it's so easy to magically improve the infrastructure of the entire US?
Critcism makes us appear smarter. I remember one time there was a story about a 55x CD burner being the fastest one available at the time. I sarcastically said something like "why do we need faster burners? All you have to do is wait longer!" and was modded Insightful.
Who cares? (Score:1, Insightful)
College football games get big enough crowds to overload cell networks. Is it really surprising the inauguration did? Can we get some informative articles please.
Patriotism, it empties your head (Score:1, Insightful)
Your argument would be valid if cities had fast broadband.
The only people who trot out this argument are too blind to see that state of broadband in America. Broadband gets cheaper all over the world, but it only gets more expensive here.
Re:Improving networks (Score:3, Insightful)
That excuse is fine in the really sparse states, but most the people don't live in those really sparse areas and yet still many are left with poor service and little choice.
If you compare VA and Scotland you get a broadly similar area. Population sizes are within 15%. VA has high population density in NoVA, Scotland has it in the Central Belt.
Scotland has 99% ADSL coverage with a wide choice of providers, right down to many sparsely populated island communities. The Government is investing to fill in the empty areas.
Cell phone coverage is almost ubiquitous in any medium sized village and along every major road. The cities have decent 3G coverage from multiple providers and that is now extending to the smaller towns with populations around 20k.
The same is decidedly not true in Virginia. I'm not suggesting Scotland is an IT utopia, there are certainly improvements that can be made. Nor is it the only available example, other European countries offer similar or better.
But yes, parts of the US are lagging other similarly sized, populated and developed countries.
Re:Improving networks (Score:4, Insightful)
Israel's cell phone system is engineered to this type of standard. Every time the rockets hit, everyone checks in with loved ones to see if they're alright.
It's really only the U.S. that has major overload issues when bad things happen. In places where bad things happen more often, their networks tend to be built to handle it.