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Mobile Cell Phone Towers For Disaster Relief
cerberus4696 writes "According to today's Denver Post, Verizon recently premiered one of its new Cells On Light Trucks (COLTs), a complete, self-contained CDMA cell that can be moved to wherever it's needed, such as the scene of a natural disaster or a large public event. Since a standard CDMA cell can only handle a theoretical maximum of 62 calls at a time (usually less in practice), the network of permanent fixtures can quickly become overloaded in high-use situations. Verizon already uses a larger version of the system known as a Cell On Wheels (or COW; gotta love these acronyms), but as it takes three trucks and the better part of a day to deploy, nimbleness of response has apparently been an issue."
That seems really limited. Hell, I bet my local high school would saturate a cell every time class let out, there were always people making calls or listening to messages. I'm surprised I don't see more towers with the number of cell phones I see daily. Of course, I am from Seattle, so the lousy reception they mention applies to me :(.
Anonymous Coward
If you're on a network that promises "No Roaming" such as Sprint's Fair and Flexible America or Alltel's Total Freedom, it shouldn't matter what company puts up the tower... you can use it.