Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Cellphone Networks Survive Inauguration, Mostly

Posted by timothy on from the ever-more-robust dept.

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."

7 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. All circuits are busy now by GigaHurtsMyRobot · · Score: 5, Funny

    Please try first post again later.

  2. Shhh! by RulerOf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

    ---
    Sincerely,
    That company that would charge you $5000 to send an MP3 over SMS

    --
    Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
  3. Re:My experience by panoptical2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    If the phone infrastructure is down, then texting is actually less reliable. I think Slashdot posted an earlier story about how texts actually piggyback onto the spare bandwidth of the network's phone infrastructure; the texts do not travel on a separate network. This goes to explain why your text wasn't received until almost an hour later...

  4. Where's the motivation by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  5. How about fixing just the cities by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Yeah, we all know that the whole country is big, but the cities are relatively small. Why is it that people drop calls while driving through some areas of Silicon Valley?

    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.
  6. Re:Improving networks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't care what the Risk board says, Northern Europe is NOT a country.

  7. Re:Improving networks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    IIRC, when I modded your comment insightful, I was also being sarcastic.