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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."
European GSM operators have been doing this for years.
Does anyone have pictures of these thingies?
Remembers me about those Lasershow-trucks from Lobo - they're really cool!
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
Does it have chargers for the depleted cell batteries?
If you put a cell on a COW, can you tip it?
Communication actually is the first service that is needed after a natural disaster. It just turns out that cellular service gives the best bang-for-buck in terms of communication capability.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
Whether or not roads would be open is in question not to mention its slow response time. Maybe they could make it fly or something. It's always cool when things fly, right?
..what happens if I use a competitor's phone system (like, say.. Sprint?). It's absolutely no benefit to me.
If they were really for "disaster relief" and not "public image relief" these mobile towers would be system-neutral.
Actually, I think it highlights a bigger problem - if the companies worked together with standards that were compatible, mobile phone coverage would be much better and busy networks would be much less of a problem.
Nextel has been doing this for a while as well, and recently, since they now are the primary sponsor for NASCAR, they have been taking enough of these units to all of the tracks to ensure that everyone can get NEXTEL service at the event. Great marketing.
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
This could be an incredibly useful technology. Anyone who had someone in New York/DC during 9/11 knows how difficult it was to get a hold of anyone that day. Aside from the fact that cell towers went down with the WTCs, Verizons CO (central office) was right next to Tower 1 and 2, knocking out quite a few landlines. Switching capabilities were compromised, leaving most of us with "All circuits are busy." In the future, deploy a few dozen of these and the cell phone capacity could ramp up rather quickly in an extreme event.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
I wonder why they didn't call it a Cellular User Node Transport? I think that would be nuch better.
Near the Pentagon in the first days after the attack they put up some towers and said they were using it to triangulate the location of cell phones that might still be on and inside the rubble. It ended up staying there for about six months or so.
Verizon has taken even more dramatic action to cope with disasters in the past. In 2000, during the Hi Meadow fire near Bailey, the company used helicopters and llamas to transport equipment to the rugged terrain, Weaver said.
Did anyone else notice this? Llamas. And helicopters. Sounds elaborate. Makes me glad I'm not with Verizon.
You may have victims trapped under rubble, or stranded in flood waters who can call for help thanks to this. Residents in the area of a disaster could potentially use up all of the capacity in a disaster area calling family members to let them know their ok. This would increase cellphone capacity in that area, just like they do at sporting events.
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www.fairtax.org
There is the thing where you call your relatives to say you're okay. My husband better be trying his butt off to call me if he's ever in a disaster.
Which is a good reason that Ham radio ops are still useful, particularly in disaster relief scenarios where much of the local infrastructure may have been destroyed.
But first you have to get us to stop talking about the weather and our rigs.
Remember the good ole days when you went behind a tree for diaster relief?
Those damn kids and their new technology!
This is News... On... Parade...
(Queue trumpets)
Thanks to new advances in radio cullularology, our fearless fighting men in Europe can stay in touch with one another in the field and their commanding officers back at the base. This is accomplished by the US Army's Verizon Corps, who follow our troops across Europe erecting cellular phone towers at key battle sites. This gives our fighting men an advantage over the German oppressors, who are forced to rely on tin cans connected by string. So, when the US Army asks, "Can you hear me now?", America can proudly say, Yes We Can.
This has been News... On... Parade...
Unknown host pong.
Why not a blimp with CDMA cells tied to an anchor (truck, etc) with power running from the anchor? Seriously, you could probably tow a launch platform (uhaul sized trailer) behind a small pickup, suv, van etc with an He supply and a generator.
You drive to site, inflate, and let her pop-up. Crank up your Honda generator and away you go. And now let the EEs shoot down my idea (not literally).
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
I rather wonder, aside from the hobby aspect, how much longer Amature Radio will remain relevant. Seems disasters where AR would really shine and this sort of thing seems to replace them, as now pretty much anyone can afford a hand held phone, where once transmitters and receivers were the domain of those who actually cared enough to outfit and train themselves to be available for when there was need. Now you just whip out a cell phone and dial 911.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I always thought that unmanned dirigibles would be great for something like this. Or for additional cellular (and wi-fi) capacity for special events, e.g. the olympics.
I mean, a couple of gyroscopes and some electric motors is all it would take to keep the thing approximately where it's supposed to be. They could carry batteries that recharge using solar cells during the day.
And then I thought, surely someone else has thought of this -- but I never hear anything about them, so maybe not.
"There is no night so forlorn, no mood so bleak, that it cannot be infused with pleasure by tender meat..." - R.W. Apple
InfraLynx builds various vehicles now being used by the Homeland Security dept and the military. They have mobile cell towers, satellite uplinks, and all kinds of communications equipment.
i vers/
r alynx&btnG=Google+Search
2600 took some pictures. they are here http://www.2600.com/offthehook/2003/1001files/
another link:
http://iwce-mrt.com/ar/radio_infralynx_hummer_del
and the google page: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=inf
... are pretty much portable. There are perhaps half-a-dozen now across Rannoch Moor in Scotland. They consist of a metal "shed" with the cell tower antenna on top, and a diesel generator and fuel tank which gets topped up by a guy with a Landrover and a bowser every week or so. Typically they're sited on a hilltop, up to half a mile from the road. The cell tower "shed" is about the size of an Escort van, maybe a bit bigger. Certainly I see no reason why you couldn't fit the whole lot, with a folding antenna, into the back of a Ford Transit.
I digress... My point was, when a disaster strikes, you often have volunteers helping with the disaster relief. In our case, the volunteers were relying on cell phones for communications. Not everyone has access to police or rescue radios.
Wealso have those, but CDMA, for about 3 years here in Brazil. They're usually used in shows and sports events.
"How do more people on cell phoes relieve disaster? I don't mean to be cynical, but there are much better tools for disaster workers, like radios and such."
So are they going to hand out radios to victims so they can be found?
"Derp de derp."
Loss of phone services in the situations the article describes is certainly inconvenient for the public, but hardly a disaster. Unless they were talking about the companies revenue.
I'd be more interested if they could find a way to set up fast communications networks when there has been an earthquake or such where good communications may really help rescue and reconstruction efforts.
But then in that situation you could certainly put more useful facilities on three trucks than a cell phone system.
As past chief of a Fire Department I can tell you that a good, RELIABLE cell phone is critical to emergency management for the following reasons:
-Radio communications that Fire Departments/Ambulances/Police use are usually one or two half duplex channel. If you are lucky, you have four or five channels, but only one or two will get you in touch with you dispatcher (911 center). During a natural disaster, hundreds of units across your county could be trying to reach the 911 center at the same time. The existing communications systems available for emergency response become so overwhelmed during disasters that they become useless for communications (the worst example being NYPD and FDNY on 9-11). When radio systems do get overwhelmed, go to plan B: The cell phone.
-Radio communications are great for units that work together, but what happens when I need to talk to the people at a chemical manufacturing plant to best find out how to deal with a spill of their product? Or talk to the DOT about closing a road. Or even talk to the local Police (not on the same frequency). Or order as many pizzas as I can get my hands on to feed my Firefighter's? Or call the Humane Society to deal with the 57 cats that are homeless now that the crazy cat woman has finally burned her house down? Plan B: The cell phone
-Sensitive information (about a patient or fatality) should be handled discreetly. Many people listen to our transmission (and don't start a debate here, I am glad that people monitor the Fire and Police frequencies). As a medic if I need to talk to a doctor about a 15-year-old girl who has overdosed trying to commit suicide, I don't want that broadcasted to everyone in the county. Plan B: The cell phone.
Once upon a time (1990s) my local cell phone company actually entered our phones in to their systems as priority phones. Assuming that FD communications is more important than civilian communications, the system would kick off a civilian user to let the FD cell phone connect when the tower was full. I could never quite figure out how the tower would know my call was coming in if all of its receiving channels were full, but I never had a problem connecting a call so I never asked. I wish they still had that in place, because there have been many times recently that I haven't been able to connect with my cell phone when I needed to. My town (population of about 1000 year round residence, 5000 winter only residence) hosts a festival that yearly draws about 60,000 people. That is when I most need my cell phone to work, and it usually doesn't.
Where do I order one of these light truck cell towers?
Now show me some news on GSM, then the 'rest of the World' might be interested.
Agree with another poster here... they rolled out a mobile cell site at the Pentagon on Sept 11, and handed out precharged mobile phones for the responders to use.
Here in New Zealand we have had mobile cell sites at popular New Years holiday spots (to handle surge capacity) when the country goes on holiday for a week or two at Xmas/New Year. They have been doing this a couple of years at least.
Whata so special about this one?
Australia uses CDMA too, since it's cheaper and more efficient to roll out than GSM, especially when trying to cover 1000s of K's of sparsely populated areas.
Unlike GSM, however, CDMA in Australia is (AFIAK) a Telstra-only service (Australia Telecom).
CDMA performs surprisingly well, almost matching the range of the old analogue AMPS towers we had circa 1999, and at a fraction of the cost (per base station).
Too bad the first (Qualcomm) phones they sold for it were crap - buggy firmware, expensive car kits.
If you're travelling in remote areas, CDMA is all you're going to get (if anything).
Mobile cells for disaster relief or for big public gatherings (concerts, festivals..) have been in Europe for years.. Here are pictures from floods in Prague in 2002.
If there is existing infrastructure nearby, they can tap into local phone or data lines, and the BS may be even lucky enough to get use of a T1 line, or even DSL to send VOIP. 1.6 Mhz of bandwidth will support a couple of dozen voice channels, and depending on the grade of DSL, much the same.
If the local terrestrial infrastructure is nonexistent, inadequate, or severely damaged, then the choice becomes microwaves. While the microwave relay stations are old tech, microwave relays are still used for many things, and if the option is available, then it would provide an alternative means of transmitting data. If there is no microwave link nearby, it might be possible to position a second or even third mobile relay station to get the signal where it needs to go.
Failing a practical path via microwave or microwave relay via earth stations, there is always the option of setting up a satellite link to do the job. Expensive yes, but it will work just about anywhere you can find open sky.
The point is, there is almost always a way to get the job done.
The other traffic channels are still available for soft and softer handoff. That's when two or more cells (or sectors within a cell) carry a single call simultaneously. The mobile combines the two cells' signals just as it would the multipath components from a single cell.
Also, the limits of the forward (base-to-mobile) and reverse (mobile-to-base) links may not be reached at the same time. CDMA 2000 1x introduced coherent modulation with a pilot on the reverse link, and this produced a significant improvement in real-world reverse link capacity.
I've already seen such trucks on festivals around Europe about 4 years ago and probably made quite a few calls through their systems too - nothing new here.
0x or or snor perron?!
At least for GSM such mobile base stations are technology which had already happened years ago. In fact one of the dutch mobile providers had a mobile BTS at the hacker camping HIP in 1997.