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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."
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 :(.
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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?
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.
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.
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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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
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.
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.
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.