[oclug] Disintermediate the telephone company

[Greg Franks]

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


Have you ever noticed that all of the radio stations in town have the
same prefix :-).  The switch is configurable to shed load as needed.

On a related topic... while cell towers may or may not have standby
power, those using VOIP at the customer premise probably aren't.
Fibre to the home has this problem too... how do you keep the customer
premise equipment powered up during a power failure?  Batteries?  What
happens when they die from old age. etc.
-- 
   __@               Greg Franks              <|       _~@ __O 
 _`\<,_         Ottawa, Ontario, Canada        |O\   -^\<;^\<, 
(*)/ (*)                                       (*)--(*)%---/(*)
          "Where do you want to go today?"   Outside.