Verizon Drops 10,000 911 Calls During Blizzard

mschaffer noted a Bloomberg piece saying "US regulators said Verizon Communications Inc.'s networks may have dropped a 'truly alarming' number of wireless emergency calls during a snow storm last month, and asked the carrier to investigate." The article says 10,000 calls failed to connect during one blizzard. Can't wait to see what all those AT&T migrators think.

Comments

Que the "Can you hear me now" jokes

[raitchison]

Seriously, 10,000 911 calls is a huge number, even if 911 is being abused there were no doubt a lot of calls from people trapped in their homes (for people who have ditched their landlines) or cars. Imagine an elderly person in their home when the heat goes out, in those cold temperatures that can become life threatening very quickly.

Things like this are one of the main reasons we pay ~$25/mo for a land line despite having 5 active cell phones in the house on 2 separate networks (not to mention a few inactive ones that can still call 911) I know that if the excrement hits the air circulator that I will have more options to reach people than finicky mobile networks.

Re:Que the "Can you hear me now" jokes

[h4rr4r]

I lived for two weeks in the buffalo winter without heat when i first moved in. With some blankets and a sleeping bag you can do fine.

Re:Obligatory

[KshGoddess]

911 is a tricksy beast, and when you combine RF issues, like rain fade (snow fade - which is less, but still noticeable) and location services (which tell the carrier WHICH 911 center to route the call to) ... 10k dropped 911 calls out of ... how many total placed calls? How was this data collected? Was there a record of 10,000 dropped calls that actually connected to 911? Is this from a log from their switches covering that area? How did their competitors fare? So much is so vague about this article, that it makes my head spin.