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Cellphone Networks Survive Inauguration, Mostly
nandemoari writes "Everybody was talking about Barack Obama's inauguration on Tuesday morning, and it showed. According to reports, a number of mobile phone networks faced overload circumstances that day until late afternoon, when the chat sessions finally began to dissipate.
Having the most trouble that morning appears to have been T-Mobile, and AT&T also had some difficulty that morning."
Please try first post again later.
Seriously, the Cell on Wheels installations were part of what made it possible to handle the extra traffic.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Just another example of the pros and cons of different companies in the cell phone market. I went to the Inauguration with my Verizon phone, and had no trouble making a few calls or texting people right from the mall.
On the other hand, I am still trying to find a way to get away from Verizon and onto AT&T or T-Mobile, because their phones are mediocre, customer service is below par, and they restrict their devices.
It's all about what you want to sacrifice when buying a phone - a wide network and more call/text service, or a better device that is on an open platform.
--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's Sister?
Be vewy vewy quiet!
If they don't ask why the service isn't getting better but the prices are getting higher, they'll never suspect that we'd rather hoard cash instead of reinvesting it! Teeheeheehee!
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Sincerely,
That company that would charge you $5000 to send an MP3 over SMS
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
I think most companies learned a lesson on 9/11 when the main cell tower in New York was on the World Trade Center, that they have to have a quick and effective way to get "Temp-Towers" up to handle the over flow and extra traffic. Guess its not something they can test to make sure it works well, lets hope they never have to use it on a regular basis.
Why would they build a network capable of handling extreme peaks in usage? It's much less wasteful for them to do quick fixes (CoW, etc.) during the times they need it than to build that capacity into the network.
To appear on ~1M mobile phone bills.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I was down on the Mall yesterday and tried to make a few calls to someone who got separated from our group. Nothing was going through. I then decided to send a text message to her. She got it close to an hour later (after we'd already met up again). Apparently it was completely hit or miss as to whether your call or text got through.
This guy's the limit!
I was on the Mall in DC, and AT&T's data network was completely down through most, if not all, of the day. Since they have to dedicate channels to data, I'm sure they decided to abandon data completely. Another example of how current data carriers don't take their data networks seriously. They're *obviously* not as important as voice...
Well, yea...I mean there brough in like extra cell towers for the local area.
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Why do people assume it's so easy to magically improve the infrastructure of the entire US? Have you compared the size of America to the size of Europe or Japan? The lower 48 are huge even without including Alaska. I want faster broadband and improved cell phone coverage too but lets be realistic. We're a bit bigger than Japan / insert-random-euro-country-that-we-should-be-like.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
They couldn't fit that giant crowd of people from the Verizon commercials (or whatever company that is) into the area that was already overpacked. That was the real problem. Btw as for the people who keep saying the cell towers on wheels solved all the problems, I dunno what moron thought that was going to help but there's only so much bandwidth available in the air regardless of the number of towers and you can't have them stomping on each other.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
As for the content.... more does not mean better. Having millions sending vids and pics shot with crappy cellphone lenses was hardy of benefit. A few real camera crews with real cameras provided all the really useful (ie worth viewing) material.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If people continue to pay high prices for shit service then where is the motivation to improve the infrastructure? They might bitch, they might grumble, but they still pay.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Russia? That is a good side. I dont know about their network though.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
red herring. if thats true than explain why cell service is as crappy in Manhattan than in bumsticks OK.
Canada. Russia. Northern Europe. All countries have similar population density.
My brother is an international tour guide and uses a cellphone in places like Rwanda which has about the same coverage density as USA. Is that what the USA industry really wants to be compared to?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If this was an emergency like on 9/11/2001, then this would had been very bad.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I don't care what the Risk board says, Northern Europe is NOT a country.
Why do people assume it's so easy to magically improve the infrastructure of the entire US?
Critcism makes us appear smarter. I remember one time there was a story about a 55x CD burner being the fastest one available at the time. I sarcastically said something like "why do we need faster burners? All you have to do is wait longer!" and was modded Insightful.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Puh-lease. It's as simple as adding a line item in the upcoming stimulus plan. A few billion extra dollars isn't going to break the bank. And it will create jobs - high paying, stable jobs. And it will also help revive our education system.
And, I'll get a pony in the bargain.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Because New York City is run buy a collection of corrupt thugs that like to tax and stagnate things. You can't have a tower somewhere a condo is going to be built. Plus you always have to brib...go through the proper channels and get the proper permits. Doing anything in New York City without wasting a shitload of money is impossible. Don't expect it to get any better there with a self-righteous mayor, a wimpy Governor, and the city council sold to the highest bidder.
I'm curious to see numbers on Facebook's traffic during/after the inauguration. It seemed like I was getting a ton of "So-and-So has updated Something-or-Another" during the hours immediately after.
Bark less. Wag more.
IIRC, when I modded your comment insightful, I was also being sarcastic.
College football games get big enough crowds to overload cell networks. Is it really surprising the inauguration did? Can we get some informative articles please.
All three of those regions are rather close to the arctic circle. Although the population density of the country may be similar, I'd venture a guess and say that most of the people are rather concentrated in major cities (or, in Canada, along the southern border).
In the US, the population is more widely dispersed than in these three areas. In other words, we have more people living in "the middle of nowhere" than they do, and our major cities are more separated as well.
Really? How about Western Australia? Should I consider another base?
No sig for the moment.
Your argument would be valid if cities had fast broadband.
The only people who trot out this argument are too blind to see that state of broadband in America. Broadband gets cheaper all over the world, but it only gets more expensive here.
The article bases its claim that T-Mobile had the biggest problem on "PC World reporting that one customer complained they were unable to make or receive calls throughout the entire morning leading up to Obama's appearance." One customer!
People need to learn that during a 9/11 they should not use phone services (cell or landline) except for vital comms. Cut the twitter, OMG! video to friends and all that crap. Leave the airwaves for those that need it. Same deal for cars etc. Stay away and leave the roads for emergency vehicles.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
yet your only slightly bigger than Australia which has a population of just 21 Million and our phone service doesn't suck.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
You are entirely correct.
However, the mobile providers also get goverment subsidies and make profits that would make any retailer sell his soul to get 10% of what they make.
America is larger and harder to cover with cells than most of Europe, our providers also make FAR FAR more than they need to for the investment in infrastructure upgrades to be considered sane. Theres no excuse for the service we get out of mobile providers in the states.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
No surprise that T-Mobile had so much trouble. I've heard they're OK elsewhere, but in the DC area their coverage is horrible. Pity too because they have the best phones... First the sidekick and now android.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
That excuse is fine in the really sparse states, but most the people don't live in those really sparse areas and yet still many are left with poor service and little choice.
If you compare VA and Scotland you get a broadly similar area. Population sizes are within 15%. VA has high population density in NoVA, Scotland has it in the Central Belt.
Scotland has 99% ADSL coverage with a wide choice of providers, right down to many sparsely populated island communities. The Government is investing to fill in the empty areas.
Cell phone coverage is almost ubiquitous in any medium sized village and along every major road. The cities have decent 3G coverage from multiple providers and that is now extending to the smaller towns with populations around 20k.
The same is decidedly not true in Virginia. I'm not suggesting Scotland is an IT utopia, there are certainly improvements that can be made. Nor is it the only available example, other European countries offer similar or better.
But yes, parts of the US are lagging other similarly sized, populated and developed countries.
> Why would they build a network capable
> of handling extreme peaks in usage?
Large scale emergencies?
Yeah but its sad when Australia beats you at broadband and mobile coverage. :P
Ahh the benefits of having a consumer and competition comission.
I use Sprint and was about 250m from the Washington Monument. While I had full bars the entire morning, texts were hit or miss - sometimes they went through, othertimes they did not. Calling was impossible. I tried calling twice and neither ever actually got through.
A friend with AT&T was able to get texting to work, but was not able to call nor to send a picture message.
All in all? I would not say they "survived".
Only in the sense that I can use my Sprint phone today, I suppose.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
So they should build out their network in every city in America to be able to handle an emergency that has 2 million people coming to the area for a 2 day period? That seems logical...
Australia is the same size as mainland US, and it has 8% of the population.
Go whinge somewhere else.
My service on Sprint in Brooklyn was fine during the inauguration. I tried to watch it on Sprint TV via CNN and it failed to connect though, I did manage to get streaming audio from WNYC however and heard it all on the phone.
2m in 2d might seem extreme, but it was shown to be possible 2d ago. Should we set a design goal of 640k?
True that. Who could have possibly anticipated such a large gathering in this unremarkable city?
:x
Israel's cell phone system is engineered to this type of standard. Every time the rockets hit, everyone checks in with loved ones to see if they're alright.
It's really only the U.S. that has major overload issues when bad things happen. In places where bad things happen more often, their networks tend to be built to handle it.
+++OK ATH
It's really only the U.S. that has major overload issues when bad things happen
Depends on the point of view, I guess, but Obama being inaugurated wouldn't qualify as a bad thing :-)
I come from a country where bad things don't happen on a regular basis, but the network here also basically fails every new year's eve, for example, when everyone's calling and messaging every friend they have to give their wishes. In fact I can't even think of another yearly event where the network fails. Maybe christmas eve?
Basically it all comes down to the economics of investing and maintaining a network which is only used to its full capacity once or twice in a year, and for reasons which, frankly, can wait.
I guess it makes much more sense to make that investment in a place like Israel.