[oclug] Disintermediate the telephone company

[Olaf Baumann]

On Mon, 2004-06-14 at 12:27, Rod Giffin wrote:

<snip>
> THe problem during a power failure is not that the cell phones can not
> work, the problem during a power failure is the cell towers do not work. 
> That problem was evident during last year's power blackout.  Cell phones
> were dead, land lines were not.  In areas (such as Barrhaven) where the
  I was under the impression that the cell phone services were
operational after the blackout (if memory serves).  The problem was that
once the power went, everybody grabbed their cell phones to make
arrangements/plans ("Hi Honey, I'm in gridlock, I won't be home for a
while" and "Hey buddy, I bet'cha this is a terrorist plot").  The result
is that the capacity of the cellular system was maxed and most people
didn't get served.

  I don't believe that telephone systems are not designed to handle the
situation where every subscriber goes off-hook simultaneously.  In the
past, radio contests with big prizes tended to expose this[1].  The
cellular market, I imagine, is even more thinly spread, and would be
more suseptable to load.
-- 
Olaf


[1] I can't find any references on the web to this, does anyone remember
this happening?  Maybe I've fallen prey to urban legends