Verizon Drops 10,000 911 Calls During Blizzard 300
mschaffer noted a Bloomberg piece saying
"US regulators said Verizon Communications Inc.'s networks may have dropped a 'truly alarming' number of wireless emergency calls during a snow storm last month, and asked the carrier to investigate." The article says 10,000 calls failed to connect during one blizzard. Can't wait to see what all those AT&T migrators think.
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
911, Can you hear me now?
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"I hold it true, whate'er befall;
...Than never to have called at all"
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have called and dropped...
-Alfred Tennyson
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Interesting)
Que the "Can you hear me now" jokes (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, 10,000 911 calls is a huge number, even if 911 is being abused there were no doubt a lot of calls from people trapped in their homes (for people who have ditched their landlines) or cars. Imagine an elderly person in their home when the heat goes out, in those cold temperatures that can become life threatening very quickly.
Things like this are one of the main reasons we pay ~$25/mo for a land line despite having 5 active cell phones in the house on 2 separate networks (not to mention a few inactive ones that can still call 911) I know that if the excrement hits the air circulator that I will have more options to reach people than finicky mobile networks.
Re:Que the "Can you hear me now" jokes (Score:5, Interesting)
I lived for two weeks in the buffalo winter without heat when i first moved in. With some blankets and a sleeping bag you can do fine.
Re:Que the "Can you hear me now" jokes (Score:5, Insightful)
You might or I might be fine, but I was talking specifically about elderly people without a lot of stamina, especially problematic for a widow who's never had to worry about how to deal with the cold in her entire lifetime.
In general, many people have become soft thanks to modern life.
Re:Que the "Can you hear me now" jokes (Score:5, Insightful)
Frailer bodies have more difficulty in producing and maintaining the required body heat. It is easier for a younger healthier person to keep their core temp up. Blankets only go so far, and an older person may not be able to keep warm enough.
There is also the awareness to get some extra blankets out. They may go to bed feeling fine, but then have hypothermia set in over night. At that point, you start to shut down and you aren't thinking too well. More than likely, they would remain where they are instead of getting up to find more warmth.
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From what I have experienced with the complete losers my 19 year old daughter is bringing home as boyfriends. I'll take a 80 year old frail person over a useless 20-23 yr old toothpick pothead wearing skinny jeans and a hoodie.
at least the 80 year old can hold intelligent conversation.
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They're old, they should have figured shit out by now, if not then oh well.
You, sir, are an asshole.
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I, on the other hand, think the world would be better off without those who are congenitally devoid of empathy (please look up the word, although it may be hard for someone without it to grasp its meaning).
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I don't think stamina was the right word.
The body's ability to regulate it's core body temperature diminishes with age. This is why the elderly is more prone to hypothermia in the winter and heat strokes in the summer. Blankets may help but the lower metabolism that the elderly may have would make it necessary to have an additional heat source to help warm the blankets initially, recover any heat being lost through the blankets, or when they have to get out from underneath the blankets to relieve themselve
Re:Que the "Can you hear me now" jokes (Score:5, Insightful)
> If you don't have...
Some other things whose lack might invoke your "miserable death":
A 2 week supply of water. You don't think public water supplies are going to remain stable, do you? And if you're talking about "death by cold", then you're also talking "pipes freeze". And since you're talking about using sleeping bags and blankets to keep yourself warm, that same water supply needs to be in meltable chunks. You'll be a sad panda when you find your 5 gallon buckets are 5 gallon blocks of ice. ... and sadder when the heat comes back on and you find they split...
Emergency sanitation. Frozen pipes. Two weeks. you do the math. And if you're talking "can't open the door because of the snow", don't tell me "just do it outside in the snow".
Your own home. You honestly think you can store all of that in a studio apartment? If you do, where are you going to put the sleeping bag down at?
I'll point out as well that the "old widow", being "old" may well not be able to generate enough heat on her own to keep from freezing, even with the best of insulation. It takes a lot of calories to do that kind of thing, and you have to be able to USE those calories, which an old person may well not be acclimatized to.
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Blankets wouldn't suffice, but with proper insulation heat isn't really a problem. Of course then you need to worry about suffocation. And I don't mean because of pressure. With really good insulation a single candle can warm an entire house...but that means restricting air flow. At some point there's no workable tradeoff that doesn't involve outside sources of power.
That said, you aren't going to get this kind of insulation with blankets and sleeping bags. This involves structural modifications to the
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If the issue is snow, you melt that and drink it. Yes this means you need to have more fuel. You can crap in the tub if need be.
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Emergency sanitation. Frozen pipes. Two weeks. you do the math. And if you're talking "can't open the door because of the snow", don't tell me "just do it outside in the snow".
Can't speak for the rest, but bathtub is a pretty good option for holding lots of waste. When the pipes thaw and water returns, bucket it into the toilet and flush, then wash/clean out the tub. There will not be any insect issues that temperature.
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Death by cold. pipes freeze and burst below 32 deg F. you will die if exposed to 40 degree temperatures for an extended period of time.
Water supply will be just fine and you will be a meat in a refridgerator.
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Not much. How much stamina does it take to survive the cold even when you have the blankets? More than some old people have.
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Not much. How much stamina does it take to survive the cold even when you have the blankets? More than some old people have.
Its all very amusing watching southerners condescendingly babble about the elderly struggling in unsurvivable 32 degree F weather, but PLEASE recall that there are actually people in Canada over the age of 50! Grandparents are not simply placed on ice floes and pushed out to sea up here. In fact I have heard a rumor there are people in northern Wisconsin over the age of 80! And not just surviving, but thriving.
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Because any longer than that and you can pretty much bet modern civilization totally failed. Two weeks is just a little longer than it should take to get power back to pretty much anywhere. You try 5 or 6 days without food in the middle of winter with no heat and let me know how it works out for you.
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It certainly wasn't a tragedy or anything, but when I was a kid after Hurricane Hugo we went for over 45 days without power. Now, granted, that was a little over 20 years ago, but it'd still fall into the realm of what I'd call modern. I had a computer and video game systems I was praying for power to run :).
Overall though, you make due. We'd go to my uncle's house about a quarter mile away and use his hand powered water pump to fill buckets with water. Certain buckets were set aside and used for cooki
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I can answer that one pretty easily for myself, living in New Orleans.
When a storm is on the way, I just get the fuck out of town!!
I have never understood why some people want to stay and ride out the storm? I figure (unless it is a Katrina type disaster) it is basically gonna be about a 4x day or so vacation out visiting friends and r
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I certainly don't like to be in NOLA in the middle of summer with no AC...why even stay to do that?
I believe the word is poverty.
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Some people have nowhere to go and no money to go anywhere if they did. I certainly think they should pack up and move someplace cheaper and poorer where they can live... assuming they can work for the same amount of money there which is seldom true. Perhaps you propose creating a public fund for providing for storm evacuation?
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You try 5 or 6 days without food in the middle of winter with no heat and let me know how it works out for you.
I'm sure I would hate it (and I usually do have quite some days of this or that dry food, it is easy to put the new stuff on the back of the shelf), but I'm also quite sure I would survive it, with basically zero issues.
Fat slashdotters living in their mothers' basements are quite different from frail old ladies. The fat keeps us warm and provides needed chemical energy.
Re:Que the "Can you hear me now" jokes (Score:5, Funny)
2 weeks is of course the length of time a zombie can last without eating brains. Assuming that the zombies did not get a chance to eat any of your neighbors you can now go exploring for food. The remaining difficulty is with migratory zombies, so there is still some chance of "miserable death" occuring.
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Sleeping bags and blankets are fine, but hookers really help you keep warm when it's cold out. Though granted, that's only for an hour (unless you're Mr. Moneybags or something).
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Let me clarify, West Seneca. Which might not get that cold, but colder than right on the lake. Those weeks it only got down to single digits at night. I have also gone camping in the Alaska winter, that was double digits negative. Both seem to have not killed me.
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That's funny, because I've camped in double digits negative too, of course the only reason I survived was due to specialized gear to handle that cold. Almost no one would have gear that could handle that although it's unlikely a house would get that cold during an extended period without power. Other posters have said it better, a water supply will be difficult to maintain as it is likely to freeze so the bottom line is that you will need a lot of propane to be prepared and even then you have sanitation iss
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I was shocked when I visited a friend from the NE area and found that MANY people don't even have AC in their houses?!?! I'd never seen that before really, growing up in the south.
I guess the cold up there in analogous to our h
Re:Que the "Can you hear me now" jokes (Score:5, Funny)
I've actually had to try to survive a couple of nights in New Orleans in dead of summer with NO air conditioning, man, that was brutal.
You should have tried some blankets. I've recently read that they work wonders.
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I don't know how people lived and worked down here prior to the invention of AC, especially with all the damned clothes they work back then...whew.
Add to that a corset and now you know why women were constantly fainting back then.
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Re:Que the "Can you hear me now" jokes (Score:4, Funny)
"... I'd sleep with no shirt on with blankets around my waist and be perfectly warm.
My grandma did it till the day she died at 90."
Thanks, but I don't want to try to picture that.
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Perhaps it's just a small part of my plan, I've got a small generator, stored water + non-perishable food, not to mention camping gear, even if I don't need to call 911 it might be helpful to reach out to loved ones.
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At no point did it occur to me to dial 911...and we had from ages 2 to 70 in the house. I saw an article that said most people only have 3 days of food in their house...I have more than that in just soup.
By planning ahead, we had enough kerosene and food to get us through. I would add that if your plan doesn't include having some supplies on hand before the first flake falls, it really isn't a
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Most settlers in the USA died the first winter by being stupid and not having enough supplies. Some made it the first winter by eating all their animals after they either died from lack of food (forgot to harvest enough hay for the cow and horses) or because they froze to death because they failed to build a shelter for the animals.
Being stupid is normal for humans... the difference is that modern life has removed the stupid=dead from the equation for most of the population.
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~Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Things like this are one of the main reasons we pay ~$25/mo for a land line despite having 5 active cell phones in the house on 2 separate networks (not to mention a few inactive ones that can still call 911) I know that if the excrement hits the air circulator that I will have more options to reach people than finicky mobile networks.
Keep in mind, they said, "Verizon", not, "Verizon Wireless." That likely means your land line would have had its 911 calls dropped too.
Like you, emergencies are the only reason I still have a land line. Its a good bet to hedge. But even land lands can fail in a variety of ways. On the other side of the spectrum are those who have services like Vonage. When the power is out, so is your phone. So its really the worst or false security.
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The last time we had a real ice storm in my area Power and phone failed at the same time. When big trees break and take the lines right off the poles that happens. Cell phones were working again before land lines in many areas. Phones are not security in bad weather.
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Cell phones were working again before land lines in many areas. Phones are not security in bad weather.
The problem with cell phones is they are far, far more likely to reach capacity limits before land lines. Not to mention they require charging. And when towers go down, the phone goes into maximum TX power to reach a tower, which can drain a battery in hours, leaving you with no phone at all, even after high priority items like towers are brought back on line.
While not always true, as your story illustrates, land lands have a very long, long history of reliability in the worst of conditions. This is not ev
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I completely agree. Its really sad the ham operator is going the way of dinosaurs. In the case of emergencies, they have a long and proud history of really pulling through for their communities.
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even 2 meter will work better than a cellphone and a landline in a real emergency situation.
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I'm sorry to hear that. That's not typical across the US. If the base service simply isn't reliable where you're at, that's certainly understandable. Having said that, for most people, land lands are rock solid and rarely, if ever, go down.
For what its worth, there are literally cities in the US which have worse power service than Iraq during its constant black and brown outs. No exaguration either.
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What good is 911 in an emergency? No...I'm totally, utterly serious. For certain definitions of emergency...
In the event, *YOU* have an emergency that isn't impacting everyone else...okay, you're paying $25/month for what amounts to insurance that you have a land line to dial in if the cell network fails. Fine. Valid case.
In the event there is a local/county/state/national emergency--and you dial 911. Congrats, you're emergency caller number ... let's say 35 in a list of a thousand. The cops will be w
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Some of what you said makes sense. Lots of what you said doesn't. Worse, some of what you said is nothing but ignorance.
Phone lines are used to established contact with the outside world. Sometimes its used to get help. Other times its used to assure loved ones you're okay.
You're also down playing the likelihood of cell going down versus land line. I every major emergency I've been in, either wireless went down or was so beyond capacity it was impossible to place a call. Receiving a call are iffy, but possi
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The only major emergency to ever really impact me was the Loma Prieta quake. I lived in Santa Cruz at the time. I kept my land line, but I lived maybe six blocks from the CO.
On the other hand, there's phone lines down right now on Cobb Mountain due to snow-related failures.
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You can dial 911 without service. By law all phones connected to the network must be capable of dialing 911.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-1-1 [wikipedia.org]
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911 is useful for three things.
1 - calling about a home invasion,theft, noisy neighbor.
2 - medical emergency.
3 - structure fire that is too big for you to handle.
Any other use is being lazy. during and after a blizzard because your power is out or you have no heat is NOT a 911 emergency.
Plus, if you can't handle 1 or 2 in a dire emergency on your own... you are very poorly prepared. Know CPR, Know advanced First aid and have a full field guide sized first aid kit. And have a shotgun at home. Yes some me
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"US regulators said Verizon Communications Inc.'s networks may have dropped a 'truly alarming' number of wireless emergency calls during a snow storm last month, and asked the carrier to investigate."
That said, if you have a land-line with Verizon FIOS, you would also be S.O.L. if the power went out for any length of time as the fiber gear has a battery backup that is only good for about five hours. In fact, I used this to my advantage during one of this winter's storms where we lost power and sought out shelter at my fathers' house. I would call my land-line from my cell and if the call went directly to voice mail, I k
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You can dial 911 on any land line without service. If your shit hits the fan scenario is to call 911 you are screwed. Lots of other folks will be calling at the same time.
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You can dial 911 on any land line without service. If your shit hits the fan scenario is to call 911 you are screwed. Lots of other folks will be calling at the same time.
But a Stonecutter knows that the real emergency number is 912.
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You can dial 911 on any GSM phone without service, you don't even need a SIM-card. It is required by the standard.
Re:Que the "Can you hear me now" jokes (Score:5, Informative)
Try it.
Lines without service in the USA by law have tone and will dial 911 or let you order service. If you dial any other number it tells you that you do not have service and asks if you would like to get it.
The wikipedia article covers it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-1-1 [wikipedia.org]
The FCC rule can be found
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Reports/FCC-State_Link/IAD/pntris99.pdf [fcc.gov]
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My mistake I had thought all states had a Do Not Disconnect policy.
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This call volume doesn't make sense to me. Doing some admittedly very rough estimations: The entire population of the Washington DC metro area is 5.4 million. Now figure all the people that were grouped, either at home or in a car or stuck at work, and I suspect you'd have closer to 2 million groups. Some number of those are going to have a landline available so call it 1.8 million groups. If we assume there is only a single cell phone available per group (obviously a poor assumption) and the fact that
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I suppose the other questions to be asking are:
- how much impact did the blizzard have on signal quality?
- how good was that signal quality to start with?
- how many of those calls were reattempts?
- how good is the insulation in the homes in that area?
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This call volume doesn't make sense to me.
It seems pretty high to me, but one thing you should probably include is repeated calls by the same person failing, if the problem was severe in particular areas.
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Yep. I know it's old-fashioned but in my whole life I've never seen the landline go out, even during blackouts. Plus it's good for internet backup. (When the DSLAM died, the netzero/dialup still worked.)
>>>we pay ~$25/mo for a land line
Wow. I only pay $10 for unlimited, while my parents have $5 per-call billing (they don't call out much). You may be paying more than you need to.
>>>(not to mention a few inactive ones that can still call 911)
I have an old analog phone from 1999. You th
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I can't say if this is true everywhere, but the "inactive" landlines in the houses I've lived at still gave a dial tone. You can still use them to call 911 and toll-free (1-
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"Things like this are one of the main reasons we pay ~$25/mo for a land line despite having 5 active cell phones in the house on 2 separate networks (not to mention a few inactive ones that can still call 911) I know that if the excrement hits the air circulator that I will have more options to reach people than finicky mobile networks."
Landlines have very stringent QoS and uptime requirements. With the move to cell phones I'm surprised the ebil gov't hasn't put these job killing requirements on this no-lon
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How many have phones that don't require power? (Score:2)
Let's say the power goes out... and you need to make a phone call. How many people today have phones that do not require power (or rather take their power from the phone line)?
If you have a cordless phone you need power, not for the handset but for the base. When the time comes you'll wish you kept your $10 "Walmart Special".
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Things like this are one of the main reasons we pay ~$25/mo for a land line
The land lines are the first to go out in high winds or heavy snowfall. During the winter I had extremely unreliable landline service, but no problems at all with my mobile. The problem is that telephone exchanges don't have much backup power, and if the lines themselves fail it doesn't even matter how long the exchange will run for.
/. News Network (Score:2)
Today's top story - adverse weather conditions can negatively affect cell phone reception. In other news, high winds can knock down telephone poles and prevent phone calls.
Clearly we need some sort of communication method that is immune to weather, but what could it possibly be?
Re:/. News Network (Score:5, Funny)
nuclear detonation facilitated morse code?
I'm sure that would visible at a huge distance, regardless of weather. Sure it'd be a bit harmful to the sender, but nothing is perfect, eh?
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Well, depends on how shallow your water table is.
We can't even bury our dead below ground here in New Orleans.
Re:/. News Network (Score:5, Funny)
always keep a piece of fiber in your pocket, that way if you get lost or stranded you can just bury it. then when the backhoe comes to dig it up ask the driver for directions/help.
Give us more facts... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the FCC letter to Verizon (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2011/db0218/DA-11-328A1.pdf [fcc.gov]
Kathleen M. Grub
Senior Vice President
Public Affairs, Policy & Communications
Verizon Communications
1300 I St. NW, Room 400W
Washington, DC USA 20005
Re: Failed 9-1-1 Calls During January 26, 2011 Snowstorm
Dear Ms. Grub,
The FCC has received reports that during the snowstorm that hit the Washington D.C. region on January 26, 2011, approximately 8,300 wireless
9-1-1 calls to the Montgomery County Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), routed over the Verizon network, were not connected, and an additional 1,700
wireless calls to the Prince George's County PSAP were not connected. I know that you will agree that any 9-1-1 call which is not connected can have serious
consequences, but the large number of missed 9-1-1 calls on January 26 is truly alarming. I therefore request that Verizon provide an explanation of the causes
of this and similar failures, provide Verizon's assessment of the possibility of occurrence in other locations and describe what actions Verizon is taking to
prevent recurrence of these problems.
Here is a synopsis of what we understand so far. Through our initial discussions with various parties, including representatives of Verizon, we have
learned that the Montgomery County PSAP has fourteen trunks that handle wireless calls, seven each from the Rockville and Hyattsville Selective Routers.
The trunks from these Selective Routers to the PSAPs are maintained by Verizon (not Verizon Wireless), and there are separate trunks for wireline, wireless and
VoIP calls. At approximately 5:15 p.m. on January 26, Verizon's system automatically took one of the wireless 9-1-1 trunks out of service. It is our
understanding that this was not an overload. We understand that it is normal in large-scale emergencies for the call volume to exceed the trunk capacity, in
which case calls will be blocked until another trunk opens up. In this instance, however, the Verizon system took each of the fourteen trunks handling wireless
calls out of service sequentially so that they could not receive any more calls. By 8:45 p.m., the problem had cascaded to the other thirteen 9-1-1 trunks handling
wireless calls, so that all of the trunks handling wireless 9-1-1 traffic in Montgomery County were taken out of service by the system.
These trunks have working alarms, but Verizon did not notify the PSAPs of the failure after the alarms went off. The Montgomery County PSAP
recognized the problem just prior to 11:00 p.m. and notified Verizon. By 11:15 p.m., Verizon had placed all the trunks back into service.
Similarly, eight of the ten trunks that serve wireless calls for the Prince George's County PSAP were taken out of service automatically by Verizon on
January 26 by approximately 8:30 p.m. A ninth trunk was taken out shortly thereafter. Four were restored by 10:30 p.m.; all trunks were finally restored by
approximately 11:00 p.m.
It is not clear what caused these individual trunks to be taken out of service. Your experts have postulated that the increased call volume resulting
from the snowstorm created a timing problem on the trunks which caused them to be automatically taken out of service. However, the Private Branch Exchange
(PBX) in the Montgomery County PSAP is a relatively new CS1000E, which has the speed and capacity to handle the number of calls that were being routed.
The Prince George's County PSAP's PBX is older, but since the PBX has fewer trunks connected to it, the PBX should be able handle the call volume. The slow
response of the PBX's does not appear to be the cause of the failures.
I would note that the events of January 26 are not unique and that other similar 9-1-1 outages have occurred recently in the region. On December 17th,
2010, the Prince George's County PSAP and on July 25, 2010, the Montgomery County PSAP exper
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AT&T Migrators thoughts irrelevant. (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, but (Score:2)
Disconnect v Drop (Score:3, Insightful)
TFA explains first that 10000 calls were dropped but the investigation showed that it was 10000 calls failing to connect. Isn't this two completely different situations? The first being the customer connecting then being disconnected and the second never actually connecting. I could see someone failing to connect at all then attempt to dial multiple times in quick succession...
911 call center lines (Score:2)
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There's no real excuse for this anymore, other than the local carrier (verizon in this case) skimping on hardware. I mean how hard is it to stack a digital trunk? Not hard. But the problem is, like you say, 911 is for personal emergencies and people think they should call 911 in the event of widespread emergencies, which isn't going to help much. The emergency response system is not designed to handle massive events, it costs too much and it wouldn't add much value. In a widespread emergency, you might
I wonder why... (Score:2)
I wonder why they bothered putting 10 000 911. "Roughly 10 million" probably would have been fine.
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Why compare to AT&T? (Score:2)
Can't wait to see what all those AT&T migrators think.
I wonder why all those calls went through the Verizon network. Could it be that AT&T doesn't have reliable service in that area to begin with?
We think.... (Score:3)
that it's still better than AT&T. If I drop a call, I can retry. If I got no bars, I can't try at all.
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Er, how would you know? (maybe I don't WANT to know!)
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I was thinking the same thing, 10k calls is a lot for a 911 center to field, even with automated systems for overflow. But it'd be more interesting to know if they were failed to connect calls, or dropped calls. Dropped calls would indicate the center was answering the calls and verizon was cutting them off.
Owell as a lot of posters above have touched on, (911 and cell phones in general) have become quite a crutch for people, encouraging them to do stupid things like drive in blizzards since they have a c
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I'm sure that's what this investigation is going to be focusing on. Because yes the are supposed to test it under high load. Obviously this can't be done with actual calls, but they're required to run simulations on very high call volume to see how the system will handle it. You don't just build a critical system that "in theory can meet the design specs" and then not test it.
And if they didn't do that, did it incompetently, or lied about
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I'm not surprised. The last time my Verizon DSL had problems (50% packet loss), I went to bed thinking it would be fixed when I got up in the morning. Not only was it still not working the next morning, but when I called them they had no idea there was a problem.