Why It's So Hard To Make a Phone Call In Emergency Situations

antdude writes "BoingBoing reports on why it's 'so hard to make a phone call in emergency situations.' Quoting: '[The thing about] the radios is that they have different sizes of cells. You've got regular cells and then smaller sub-cells. You also have larger overlay macro-cells that are really big. They try to handle you within the small cell you're closest to. But it's a trade off between capacity — they'd like to have lots of small cells for that — and coverage — they don't want to put 100k small cells everywhere. So you might have a cell that covers a mile ara and then smaller cells within that that handle most of the traffic. ... In the end, it does come down to trade-offs. That's true of any network. You're interested in coverage first and then capacity. If you wanted to guarantee that a network never had an outage your capital investment would have to go up orders of magnitude beyond anything that is rational. So each network is trying to invest their budget in ways that make network appear to perform better. The cost of providing temporary extra capacity for the Boston Marathon, that's something that's in the budget and they plan for that event. But when you get something unexpected like a terrorist event, or an earthquake, or damage from a hurricane or tornado, then you have trade offs between capital and how robust your network is. Every time you have an event people say, "Oh, they didn't invest enough." But you look at New York City after Hurricane Sandy and Southern Manhattan was under 6 feet of water — all the buried infrastructure was lost.'"

Comments

Summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize that TFS is a copy & paste job, but WTF? Whomever was quoted shouldn't be allowed to use a phone ever just because they can't speak coherently.

Re:Summary?

[DougOtto]

Yet you type remarkably well. Please pull your pants up.

Re:Summary?

[TheRealMindChild]

Does that mean I can't use my shoes because I am constantly tripping?

Re:Summary?

[darkshot117]

Agreed, absolutely terrible summary, no context whatsoever. It's almost like they just copied and pasted a random paragraph from the article without even checking to see that it makes sense by itself. (which it doesn't)

Re:Summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got better.

Re:Summary?

[you-youtube]

I realize that TFS is a copy & paste job, but WTF? Whomever was quoted shouldn't be allowed to use a phone ever just because they can't speak coherently.

Finally, several other countries have implemented all sorts of special procedures for cell phone networks in emergencies (The UK, Israel, Lebanon, and Egypt all come to mind). These sometimes include shutting down cell services once a bombing occurs, but in some of these cases also include using the local version of E-911 as a priority search mechanism for people possibly trapped in rubble after a building bomb or an earthquake, and various other services that mean the system as a whole needs to stay up and function resilently under increased loads. "Common sense" would suggest that the US should have some of these protocols in place too, especially since we have spent literally 10,000.00 % of what some of these other countries have.

Re:Summary?

[MugenEJ8]

Yet you type remarkably well. Please pull your pants up.

Grrrrr no mod points!

Re:Summary?

[hawguy]

I realize that TFS is a copy & paste job, but WTF? Whomever was quoted shouldn't be allowed to use a phone ever just because they can't speak coherently.

Here's a summary of the summary:

During a disaster there are too many people trying to make calls and not enough cell sites for them all. More cell sites cost more money. Cell sites that are damaged by a disaster don't work.

But doesn't everyone already know that?

Re:Summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. Instead of thinking toes, or even voice recognition software, your mind immediately went to the gutter.

Re:Summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever.

Subject > who

Re:Summary?

[gl4ss]

Does that mean I can't use my shoes because I am constantly tripping?

well if you wear clown shoes you should probably buy normal shoes.

but this article is stupid because it's redundant, it just tells on rough scale how cellphone networks work. calls to 911 get prioritized.

Re:Summary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Switching off the phone networks violates the second amendment. It's the kind of thing Stalin did and searching for someone without a warrant is a breach of the fourth.

"An appeal to common sense is always the first justification claimed for tyranny and enlargement of the state." - James Madison
--
roman_mir

pay phones

[schneidafunk]

Pay phones will still work in emergencies. I recall that being a reason for their continued existence in the era of mobile phones.

Re:pay phones

[Anonymous Coward]

The POTS (plain old telephone system, for the young whippersnappers) didn't have unlimited capacity to connect calls either. When many calls were in progress in an area, you could pick up the phone and hear the congestion tone right away. Conversely, if you tried to call an area where many calls were in progress, you'd hear the congestion tone before you'd finished dialing. Only with the internet has it become possible that everyone can talk to someone from a different area at the same time, and only if the ISP hasn't oversubscribed the network bandwidth too badly.

Re:pay phones

[Anonymous Coward]

copper hard line is what it takes to always get service

Re:pay phones

[Xipher]

Sure, until the circuits are all tied up, or the lines get cut by a backhoe. Even land lines have limited capacity to emergency services dispatch centers.

Re:pay phones

[bickerdyke]

But the number of connected landlines in an area stays the same, even during big sports events or other mass gatherings of people. No one carries their landline phone when they visit the superbowl....

Re:pay phones

[alen]

same network capacity issues
and you have to wait in line to use it

Re:pay phones

[DougOtto]

Ever try to find a pay phone these days?

Re:pay phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Very much beside the point. Only a relatively small percentage of connected landlines can call out of area at the same time. If there is a reason for many people in an area to call or be called at the same time, POTS users experience congestion just like mobile phone users do.

Re:pay phones

[Lumpy]

500 landlines do NOT have 500 outbound connections. there are about 125 outbound connections. Therefore it is very easy to overwhelm the system.

Why is it this way? Because phone companies are cheap bastards that are in it for money and not reliability.

Re:pay phones

[Cramer]

No they do it because it's not necessary. (also "not possible") One cannot build out the PSTN such that every phone can be in use at the same time. The switch itself cannot handle 100% usage, even if it had the trunk capacity for all the lines. Telcos build their infrastructure to meet statistical average and peak usages. Cellular operators can (and do) bring in additional capacity for planned events -- emergencies are far from predictable.

E911 is in the same boat. While there are dedicated trunks to the call center, they do not have infinite capacity. There's finite number of operators to take the calls anyway.

Re:pay phones

[Obfuscant]

The POTS (plain old telephone system, for the young whippersnappers) didn't have unlimited capacity to connect calls either. When many calls were in progress in an area, you could pick up the phone and hear the congestion tone right away.

That's in the days of computer phone switches. In the old days of mechanical relays, there were a fixed, limited number of dialtone generators (and first selectors -- the stepper that handled the first digit you dialed), so if local capacity was reached you just didn't get a dialtone right away.

You still hear this today, but usually after you dial. It's the fast busy signal. The fast busy means circuits are busy, try again. The slow busy means the destination line is busy. If you try a fast busy again right away, chances are good you'll get through, and you'll confuse the person who answers if you accuse them of being on the line when you called a minute ago.

Mother's Day was a big holiday for calling, so it was more likely to hear, or not hear, this happening then.

Re:pay phones

[afidel]

Actually since we changed to packet switched networks it's 100% possible to have 100% activity, in fact today it would be trivial since voice takes so little bandwidth compared to modern networks. To give you an idea 150M people talking to 150M other people would only be 9.6Gbps which can be accommodated by a single peering link today.

Re:pay phones

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a pay phone?

Most of them are in prisons, where they are not allowed cell phones.

Re:pay phones

[rtfa-troll]

Very much beside the point. Only a relatively small percentage of connected landlines can call out of area at the same time. If there is a reason for many people in an area to call or be called at the same time, POTS users experience congestion just like mobile phone users do.

Please mod posts like this up. It's pretty insightful. What you say is mostly true. However, the fact is that the ability of mobile users to all gather in one area does make things seem worse than they would be with fixed lines. With the fixed line, when everyone suddenly wants to call, you end up with queues to get access to the phone (you wait whilst your each of your sisters in turn hog the line for 1/2 an hour). With the mobile network they do it differently and have a bunch of phones queuing. Whilst more phone calls go through the mobile network for the same investment, you also get more fast busy tones. From the point of view of user perception (where user's understand a line of people they can see, but don't understand that their particular group of phones is suspended for a short while) there is a difference.

Re:pay phones

[Cramer]

If everyone were using a digital (VoIP) phone, sure. However, the PSTN is 99% ANALOG. A 5ESS or DMS100 cannot service thousands of lines (i.e. "all of them") all at once.

Cellphones are digital, however, there are notable RF limitations to having hundreds or thousands of radios active in the same small area. It works well for SMS because the phone only needs a brief period of clear air to push it's short message -- and the tower is queuing them up and streaming them in the same manner.

Re:pay phones

[Anonymous Coward]

the PSTN is 99% ANALOG

If it still is where you are, it's not going to be much longer. It's all moving to VoIP, just with the adapter at the other end of the local loop instead of in your home.

Re:pay phones

[mrbester]

The only thing analogue about PSTNs nowadays is the user punching numbers into a dial pad. The problem is the telcos just swapped out the analogue for digital with the same capacity and only increased it because of demand for new lines. Sure, it cost a bit when they first did it but now it's piddly shit to upgrade by comparison.

Re:pay phones

[Cramer]

In the case of FiOS, Uverse, and cable "digital voice" (where the TA is in/on your house)... if you have an analog phone line, and a GREAT MANY people still do, it goes back to a central office phone switch (ala 5ESS, DMS100, etc.) that has to handle the power and A/D conversion. Those switches cannot handle everyone picking up the phone at the same time. Can they switch that many packets? Sure. Do they have that much DSP (and DMTF decoder) capacity? Questionable and No.

Re:pay phones

[Cramer]

Actually, they're pushing the A/D conversion (and power for it) to the customer -- FiOS, Uverse, TW/Comcast/etc "Digital Voice", Vonage, et. al. But there's still a heap of analog POTS out there. (line powered... as long as the wiring and CO haven't been destroyed, It. Just. Works.)

And to the point... yes, there are still pay phones around. Not nearly as many, but they still exist. They can be a HUGE profit center (as long as people aren't out destroying them.) Have you looked at the cost for a local call from a pay phone? Last time I looked... something like $0.50! One has to drop a bucket of dimes these days. :-)

Re:pay phones

[imlepid]

Yes, I agree completely. The summary spoke exclusively of cell phones (although the title didn't say so), even the land line phone system will crash under the load during an emergency situation or other unexpected event.

I once tried to call my father (who was at his work) from our home (land line to land line) immediately after a moderate earthquake. The call would not go through because all the lines were taken up. We managed to complete the call and speak to each other after waiting about 15 minutes. Capacity problems are not inherent to the cell network.

Re:pay phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, if it still is like that where you are, rest assured that it will change. The kind of phone equipment you describe is not in development anymore and replacement parts are not going to be available much longer. The phone system is going VoIP, if you want to or not. It is pointless to multiplex components like AD/DA converters, tone generators and codecs nowadays. Each line will have a complete VoIP adapter, and the traffic from voice communication, even from everyone at the same time, is trivially handled by modern IP networks.

Re:pay phones

[geekoid]

Yes they can. it's just prohibitively expensive.

Re:pay phones

[hguorbray]

not to mention during disasters such as the Loma Prieta earthquake (of which I was about 7 miles from the epicenter) when I don't believe we even had a dial tone for the first day on residential lines (although there were a lot of lines down in the Morgan Hill-Gilroy area fwiw).

-I'm just sayin'

Re:pay phones

[JWSmythe]

    A what?? I haven't seen a payphone in years. In older buildings, I've seen the kiosks where they once resided. In most airports, they've been replaced with kiosks for using laptops.

    Even still, in the pre-cell phone era, a large enough emergency would saturate phone lines, and lines at the payphones would be huge.

    I live in the Southeast US. Before cell phones were popular, the phones were frequently unusable, either due to everyone calling to make sure each other were ok, or damage to the phone networks.

    When I was 13, I was flying alone through Atlanta International. At the time, the airlines (or at least that one) required unaccompanied minors would be guided by the flight crew. Mine was kind enough to say "it's on another concourse". It wasn't a problem. The problem was that a nasty storm blew in, grounding all flights for several hours. My parents were going to meet me, but it was a couple hours from home to the airport. I went hunting for a payphone that didn't have a long line at it. It was just a storm delaying flights, and the phones were blocked by passengers.

    I ended up finding a phone down by some gates that were closed. Apparently, I was willing to hike farther than most people wanting to use the phones.

    Now? Those huge banks of phones in Atlanta no longer exist. I don't recall seeing payphones when I was driving around Boston about a year ago.

Re:pay phones

[fast turtle]

good luck holding your breath long enough to make the call - pay phones were under water in NY after Sandy while the underground vaults and tunnels the many cables ran in were flooded

Re:pay phones

[Obfuscant]

If everyone were using a digital (VoIP) phone, sure. However, the PSTN is 99% ANALOG. A 5ESS or DMS100 cannot service thousands of lines (i.e. "all of them") all at once.

That 99% analog is the wire from your house to the CO. Once at the CO, it hops the digital bandwagon and only gets back to analog at the destination CO, where it is put on a wire to the recipient.

The fact that a current CO switch could not handle all the pairs connected to at once it does not mean the problem is impossible to solve, only that the current hardware is built at a lower cost and lower capacity. A cost that the telco determines will provide adequate levels of service without wasting money building to 100% use.

Re: pay phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Erlang B explains both (GP & TFA).

Re:pay phones

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not "just like POTS users".

Re:pay phones

[Cramer]

Correct. The difference is me hanging a Linksys PAP in my kitchen vs. the telco having thousands of them in the CO. That's pretty much what a CO phone switch is. They were NEVER designed to handle 100% usage. Keep in mind, a lot these things were built in the 60's -- it's practically new if it's from the 80's. Modern systems are lightyears ahead, but telcos tend to not f*ck with what's a) paid for, and b) working. One could replace what once filled a room (old AT&T 5ESS) with something that takes up a few "U" in a rack. But those things aren't free, they aren't "established technology" (translation: the maker may know little about large scale telecoms, and may not be around in 2, 5, 10+ years), and people have to be re-trained to work on them.

[Granted, many of the BIG players have gone away... Nortel - bankrupt and sold off. Alcatel - a shadow of what once was. Amazing the amount of technology that's changed hands and gone away. And more amazing is what museum pieces telcos are still running. Starting talking about cellular, and it's a very different world.]

Re:pay phones

[Anonymous Coward]

The queues happen on POTS lines also. In California it used to be commonplace after a large earthquake that there was no dial tone, not because the lines were damaged but because everyone was on the phone. If you waited about 5 minutes a dial tone might suddenly appear and then you could make your call.

Re:pay phones

[JonBoy47]

True, the 5ESS is what you'd call a "legacy product line" these days, and the DMS-100 is orphaned thanks to the demise of Nortel. Few, if any, new ones being deployed. But there are a lot of them still in service, and they cost a couple million a piece back in the day, in no small part because they were were built to last, with 40 year design lives and extensive redundancy.

Re:pay phones

[tehcyder]

What's a payphone, grandpa?

Re:pay phones

[Lumpy]

"However, the PSTN is 99% ANALOG. "

You havent learned about phone tech in a long time. Your PSTN has been Voip from the local switch for decades. Some places like NYC has building boxes that change it to a type of VoIP at the building to allow 8 apartments in a building to use the last 2 copper pairs that are still working.

Re:pay phones

[Bengie]

From my calculations of 8Kb/s, 150m people would be 1.2Tb/s, not 9.6Gb/s. Obviously I have certain assumptions on average bandiwdth used, but 8Kb isn't much. Even if you reduced it by one magnitude, you would still be at 120Gb/s.

Re:pay phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Evan Doorbell (the phone phreak) discussed this at length in one of his tapes covering the network of the 1970's. He stated that phone companies did try to compensate on Mother's Day and Christmas by routing calls through NYC, for example, that didn't normally do so, to take advantage of the large capacity that was for the most part idle on Mother's Day (being a Sunday) and Christmas. Despite best efforts, before it was all computerized, they couldn't program in a bunch of different routing possibilities and many people would get sent to a recording. In the example recording he provides, you can hear overlapping multi-frequency tones continuously sounding; each individual string (nine beeps if I remember correctly) is a caller getting connected to the message.

Paragraphs

[Anon, Not Coward D]

More than one please

Re:Paragraphs

[Anonymous Coward]

He exposed the government's plot in his next book Science of Survival.

uh, this is common sense

[KernelMuncher]

Anytime you have a large population in a small area all wanting to make calls, the system will be overloaded. Capacity is built for normal use (which is probably 95 or 99% of normal call volume). When there are spikes in demand exceeding this volume, the network will not work as well (or even fail). Also if the network is physically damaged (such as Hurricane Sandy) it won't carry even normal call volumes. How is this not common sesne ?

Re:uh, this is common sense

[VeryBest52]

I'm sure it is common sense, but it's also worth noting that there isn't a wireless shortage or anything. It's carriers not planning for abnormal usage volume. I've seen cell service (Verizon LTE data for instance) work just fine at large events with almost 100,000 people when the cellco plans properly.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[rwa2]

Yep, pretty much have cell phone congestion during any large crowd event, such as parades and concerts and demonstrations.

All it would really take is some sort of public education campaign to use SMS in those situations.

911 does take SMS nowadays, does it not? If not, I hear SMS to Twitter / Facebook has been useful for getting people to reach out to their friends for help, who can in turn call an emergency response number... somewhere.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Not when 100000 people all try to use the phone at the same time you haven't. The handsets can't modulate their transmit power precisely enough to make cells sufficiently small that each cell has only the number of subscribers in it that it can handle at the same time without interference from handsets in neighboring cells.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[JDevers]

I've seen it handle far more than that and work fine. I help organize one of the largest motorcycle rallies in the country. From Wednesday through Saturday as many as 400,000 people pour into a small area that typically has only 10-20,000 people in it (not the whole town...just that section of town). Service used to completely bomb, but as the rally has grown consistently to its current size the providers have responded VERY well. The last two years I have had absolutely zero problems and I'm on site for nearly the whole rally. Vendors at the site used to nearly universally complain that by Friday they would have almost no connectivity on their cell credit card machines and were instead having to do imprints on hundreds or even thousands of cards a day. We complained and eventually were heard, the last two years there have been no reported problems at all.

That of course is a planned event and certainly most of the people aren't on their cells at once.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

So if capacity approaches the limit, start killing and disallowing non emergency calls. I think everyone calling his mum to say all is fine can wait until after all emergencies are called in.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[Amouth]

The cell towers/cells already do this. but even then, sometimes there isn't enough capacity to handle all the emergency calls that can originate from a small concentrated area.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[Artifakt]

There's been a hell of a lot of money spent on homeland security since 2001. That same common sense you invoke is what leads most of us to expect some of those literal trillions went into raising emergency capacity above the normal use limits, and it's also common sense to think that a place such as Boston would be fairly high on the list of areas to shore up. (Especially since there were specific ties to Boston in the original event that inspired all that spending).
            Finally, several other countries have implemented all sorts of special procedures for cell phone networks in emergencies (The UK, Israel, Lebanon, and Egypt all come to mind). These sometimes include shutting down cell services once a bombing occurs, but in some of these cases also include using the local version of E-911 as a priority search mechanism for people possibly trapped in rubble after a building bomb or an earthquake, and various other services that mean the system as a whole needs to stay up and function resilently under increased loads. "Common sense" would suggest that the US should have some of these protocols in place too, especially since we have spent literally 10,000.00 % of what some of these other countries have.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[ColdWetDog]

And the Boston Marathon is a spontaneous Flash Mob?

That is a very unfortunate choice of words there.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[alen]

data use is different than everyone in a given area trying to call on the phone at the same time

Re:uh, this is common sense

[nine-times]

I think everyone understands this, even if not on a technical level. Anything has an upper limit, beyond which is overloads.

I think the main question in my mind is, what our we comfortable with as a failure of our infrastructure? Maybe we say, "We're ok with the cell phone network going out during an emergency, since those emergencies will be rare and the cost of making the network robust and redundant enough to handle the additional volume isn't worth being able to use your cell phone in an emergency." But then are we really ok with that? If we have a bombing in a major city and people can't really report what's going on because our telecommunications can't handle the strain, is that really alright?

There may be other options, of course. Maybe we want to rethink the design of the cell network to see if we can come up with something than handles the load better and reroutes in case of congestion. Or maybe we just want to figure out a way to prioritize certain traffic so "Important" calls go through while the rest fail. Those things are both easier said than done, but they're other ways to approach the problem.

The problem I see with these kinds of problems is that everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too. They say, "Well why should we waste money building out the network to protect us from a problem that's unlikely to happen?" But unlikely things happen all the time, and when one of them causes a problem, they scream, "WHY DIDN'T WE SEE THIS COMING?" We did see this coming. We decided it wasn't cost-effective to protect ourselves. Pay more attention.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this is a classic traffic dimensioning problem. You won't build a network capable of handling calls from all the users in the area at once.

The issue with dealing with emergencies, is that, contrary to mother's day, people would keep trying in a short time interval and probably cause more troubles than help. But I don't know how traffic is currently handled on wireless networks during those events.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[Darinbob]

And this stuff happened even before mobile phones. The switching systems get overloaded if most of the traffic goes to one place instead of being spread out.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[Lumpy]

"There's been a hell of a lot of money utterly wasted with homeland security since 2001."

Fixed that for you.. you seemed to have made a very common mistake assuming that the money was spent well and not blown on completely useless things.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[CanadianMacFan]

Well if you want the cell companies to be able to handle 100,000 people starting a phone conversation at once from any random place because of some random event then you better be prepared to pay a lot more for your service.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

they do plan for what they expect to happen plus they provide emergency calls handling with priority i.e. if you call 12 or emergency teams with phones registered as priority ones will get the bandwith if any exists.
And yes there are plenty of places where bottleneck can happen. What else is new?

Re:uh, this is common sense

[afidel]

Not really, for planned events you bring in a few cell on wheels carts per carrier and increase the cell density, this is done all the time for football games and other sporting and political events. Now I'm not sure what the average use rates are for those events, but I bet for something like the superbowl it's well over 50% (for many of the folks at the Superbowl it's more about being seen at the game then it is about the game itself).

Re:uh, this is common sense

[evilviper]

Anytime you have a large population in a small area all wanting to make calls, the system will be overloaded.

That's not necessarily true. The lower the frequencies in-use, the further over the horizon your cell signal can go, and therefore be load-balanced by possibly numerous cell towers.

In a rural area, sure, there's probably only one other tower in range. But in an urban area like Boston, there's tons of cell towers around, which could absorb the sudden spike in demand from that "small area" if properly designed to do so.

Capacity is built for normal use (which is probably 95 or 99% of normal call volume). When there are spikes in demand exceeding this volume, the network will not work as well (or even fail).

If your network "fail[s]" because of traffic spikes, you're doing something horribly, horribly wrong! If that's your "common sesne", I guess common sesne is often wrong...

Besides, acting like cell towers are old telco switched circuits isn't remotely accurate, and doesn't make any sense. A phone call may only need 8Kbps of bandwidth, while with LTE, several customers (at the same time) expect to be able to download at ~50Mbps... That means for each LTE (data) customer you expect each tower to handle, you could alternately handle 6000 voice calls instead (eg. in an emergency, like this one)...

Also if the network is physically damaged (such as Hurricane Sandy) it won't carry even normal call volumes. How is this not common sesne ?

Depends on what you mean by "damaged". For power, on-site generators are fairly inexpensive, and fully automated. Fiber optics are sufficiently water-resistant, so flooding shouldn't knock them out. Stringing lines above ground has been known to be problematic for centuries, so I'd hope the important backhaul is buried, and not affected by storms. And even in the "backhoe" case, these are major telcos, and should be smart enough to have redundant links taking different physical paths.

So if you're talking about those, it's not unreasonable to expect telcos to do a better job, and avoid such "physical damage" in the future. If, however, you mean the cell towers actually being knocked out by winds and flying debris, then I'll concede the point, that significantly reduced cellular capacity is reasonable. However, the former have been the cause of a great many cell outages in the past, often lasting for days or weeks at a time, so I'm generally biased towards assuming most outages are caused by poor engineering, and extreme cost cutting at the expense of public safety, rather than reasonable, practical limitations.

Thanks to the architecture of cellular networks, it's actually practically possible for cells to be MORE RELIABLE than traditional land-lines, though that would obviously be an expensive proposition. As cellular prices fall, though (I'm paying $45/mo for unlimited everything), we should gradually be increasing the standards for cellular phone networks, rather than letting them completely race to the bottom, and cut costs to the bone at the expense of public safety.

(Disclaimer: I may or may not, work or have worked, for one or more major US cellular phone companies.)

Re:uh, this is common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

The lower the frequencies in-use, the further over the horizon your cell signal can go, and therefore be load-balanced by possibly numerous cell towers.

The scarce resource isn't towers but radio spectrum. When mobile network operators cart in micro- and nano-cells to prepare for an event with many people in a small area, they do so to reduce the size of the cells which are in actual use. This enables the reuse of frequencies at smaller distances from an otherwise interfering cell. Any single cell can still only handle a limited number of concurrent calls. That's why you make the cells smaller, not bigger. Lower frequencies provide absolutely no benefit regarding frequency reuse.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really, for planned events you bring in a few cell on wheels carts per carrier and increase the cell density, this is done all the time for football games and other sporting and political events. Now I'm not sure what the average use rates are for those events, but I bet for something like the superbowl it's well over 50% (for many of the folks at the Superbowl it's more about being seen at the game then it is about the game itself).

Right well just create a federal office of disaster so all disasters can be pre-registered and the telcos can have necessary capacity in place to handle the spike in usage.

Planed events are completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[DerekLyons]

Maybe we want to rethink the design of the cell network to see if we can come up with something than handles the load better and reroutes in case of congestion.

You have a vast misunderstanding of how the world works... Congestion isn't caused by bad routing, it's caused by too much traffic in too small an area in too short a time for the available capacity to handle. You can't reroute into or out of a congested area - because there aren't any routes to be had.
 

Or maybe we just want to figure out a way to prioritize certain traffic so "Important" calls go through while the rest fail.

That's been a standard part of telephony for at least half a century.
 

But unlikely things happen all the time, and when one of them causes a problem, they scream, "WHY DIDN'T WE SEE THIS COMING?" We did see this coming. We decided it wasn't cost-effective to protect ourselves. Pay more attention.

Again, a vast misunderstanding of how the world works. Yes, taken as an average and across the whole country - unlikely events happen on a semi-regular basis. But for an individual location? They're still very unlikely.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[geekoid]

100,000 people not all on the phone at the same time.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[geekoid]

You need to stop now, it's embarrassing.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[geekoid]

Or to get the public to not immediately call to tell everyone you are fine. IN cases like Boston, waiting an hour would have helped a great deal.

Yes, people will be worried, but be a little selfless and give way to people who need help.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[aaarrrgggh]

What isn't common sense (but TFS couldn't communicate) is the fact that the cells are call-limited; they reduce range when they are over subscribed. Usually, the fringes are all that is impacted, so you switch to the other cell site which isn't overloaded. But, with enough activity you create substantial coverage gaps in a city.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[khallow]

Maybe we say, "We're ok with the cell phone network going out during an emergency, since those emergencies will be rare and the cost of making the network robust and redundant enough to handle the additional volume isn't worth being able to use your cell phone in an emergency." But then are we really ok with that? If we have a bombing in a major city and people can't really report what's going on because our telecommunications can't handle the strain, is that really alright?

Why do you think the answer would be anything other than "yes, it's ok"? We don't rely on the cell phone network in an emergency. Nor do we want to pay a lot extra just so that we can phone home from more emergencies. There's a huge cost here associated with this additional capacity (especially given the variety of disasters which can take out cell network capacity).

But unlikely things happen all the time, and when one of them causes a problem, they scream, "WHY DIDN'T WE SEE THIS COMING?"

That's what politicians are for. They'll take this VERY SERIOUSLY and not actually do anything once it is revealed how expensive a fix would be. But in the process the ignorant part of the public is placated and life moves on.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[nine-times]

We don't rely on the cell phone network in an emergency.

That's not so clear. I've seen more and more people ditching their landline and using the cell phone for everything, including emergencies. In the coming years, cell phones may even gain in prominence in our telecommunications infrastructure.

What if a building collapses and you're stuck in the rubble. You still have your cell phone and can make a phone call. Do you want to be unable to call for help because too many people are making phone calls talking about the building collapse?

In the case of the Boston bombing, what if you saw something that was both important and time-sensitive, but couldn't call out?

I think the main reason the anser might not be "yes, it's ok" is that communication can become extremely important *particularly* when there's an emergency or crisis.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[nine-times]

You have a vast misunderstanding of how the world works... Congestion isn't caused by bad routing, it's caused by too much traffic in too small an area

What part of "rethink the design of the cell phone network" didn't you understand? The point is that the current design can't do this kind of thing, but a very different design might be able to. For example, think about the difference between the designs of FTP and Bittorrent. One gets congested when you add too much traffic. The other gets faster.

Yes, taken as an average and across the whole country - unlikely events happen on a semi-regular basis.

Yes, exactly my point. Unlikely events are *extremely* common. What makes them "unlikely" is that you don't know which unlikely event will happen where at what time. Just as an example, I feel confident saying that there will another other big huge media-grabbing disaster in the next 3 years. I can't tell you which city it will be in. I can't tell you whether it will be a hurricane, a flood, a terrorist attack, an earthquake, or something else. I can't tell you which city it will be in. I can't tell you exactly when it will happen. But when you start aggregating all of the possibilities of "disasters that could happen" in "places they could happen" over a long enough timeline, it becomes more and more certain that something will happen somewhere.

Now I'm not saying we should go to excessive measures to protect ourselves from every unlikely event, but we should plan for the unlikely. If it's not worth the investment to build a robust phone network that can handle this kind of congestion, then lets just tell people, "Hey, when something bad happens, the cell phone network will probably go out." That's not ridiculous. We tell people not to try to use the elevator in cases of emergency. Or we could say, "No, our phone network should be robust and weather this kind of event." That makes sense too.

But it's silly to say, "Well let's just not bother planning for any kind of unlikely event because unlikely things don't happen." They happen all the time.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[DerekLyons]

What part of "rethink the design of the cell phone network" didn't you understand?

What part of "you have no clue how the universe works" didn't you understand? This has nothing to do with the design of the cell phone network - it's endemic to all networks.
 

For example, think about the difference between the designs of FTP and Bittorrent. One gets congested when you add too much traffic. The other gets faster.

ROTFLMAO. More traffic means congestion, regardless of the protocol. As above, you have no clue how the universe works. Bitttorrent gets faster not because there is more traffic, but because there are more seeds - widely distributed across the net. This works because unlike cell phone communications, there are a bunch of individual and identical copies distributed and accessed asynchronously.
 

But when you start aggregating all of the possibilities of "disasters that could happen" in "places they could happen" over a long enough timeline, it becomes more and more certain that something will happen somewhere.

True - but utterly irrelevant because in the real world in a specific place - unlikely events are unlikely. (Or to put it another way, "are you stoned or just stupid to come up with tortuous and sophomoric logic?".) We don't build systems to withstand an aggregate chance, because the systems aren't located in some mythical aggregate place - they're located in a specific place.
 

But it's silly to say, "Well let's just not bother planning for any kind of unlikely event because unlikely things don't happen." They happen all the time.

The level of clueless it takes to repeat that statement is astounding. (Though it shouldn't be, given your track record.)

Re:uh, this is common sense

[nine-times]

What, are you 12 years old, or just terribly dim?

Re:uh, this is common sense

[nine-times]

Bitttorrent gets faster not because there is more traffic, but because there are more seeds - widely distributed across the net.

Yes, similar to how distributed mesh networks become more robust as you add more clients, not less so.

True - but utterly irrelevant because in the real world in a specific place - unlikely events are unlikely.

We're talking about how we design and build national infrastructure, so the likelihood of there being some problem somewhere in the nation becomes suddenly relevant.

We don't build systems to withstand an aggregate chance

And that's why we see so many catastrophic failures, because people like you don't understand proper risk management.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[Bengie]

Toss up between network neutrality and QoS. They could reserve a certain amount of bandwidth for initiating calls against emergency services, then once the connection is established, throw them into the normal pool of bandwidth with priority over non-emergence connections.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

no where in the CONSTITUTIAN does it permit a federal office of disaster.
--
Udachny

Re:uh, this is common sense

[evilviper]

Cellular telcos have a HUGE amount of spectrum, and they currently do a very poor job of spectrum reuse.

You're right that lower frequencies are worse for spectrum reuse, but cell cos have more than enough, at least for voice traffic (high-speed data can be restricted to higher frequencies that have less obstacle penetration and a shorter horizon).

Re:uh, this is common sense

[khallow]

Do you want to be unable to call for help because too many people are making phone calls talking about the building collapse?

What will that cell phone do for you within a few minutes of a building collapse? You could always call a couple of hours later when things die down and emergency communication equipment gets set up. You wouldn't be going anywhere anyway.

And if the cell network is dependent on the building standing (say because the nearby cell towers were on top of the building or some other collapsed building), you might not have that network available anyway due directly to the disaster or attack in question.

In the case of the Boston bombing, what if you saw something that was both important and time-sensitive, but couldn't call out?

I guess you'll just have to suck it up. Or maybe speak to a police officer or emergency worker who happens to have communication equipment designed to operate in this situation.

As an aside, you also make a huge assumption that being able to place a call means that you'll be able to reach someone who matters. 911 is going to be flooded even if you could make calls to the cell network. It makes far more sense from both economic and emergency preparedness senses to just not depend on cell phones in a large scale emergency.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[CanadianMacFan]

I said to have the capacity to handle a large surge due to a random event at a random place. That would mean having to build the capacity anyplace where people might be expected to gather. Of course if you know of an event ahead of time you can upgrade the system.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[nine-times]

What will that cell phone do for you within a few minutes of a building collapse? You could always call a couple of hours later when things die down and emergency communication equipment gets set up. You wouldn't be going anywhere anyway.

Well you could be losing blood, for example.

And if the cell network is dependent on the building standing (say because the nearby cell towers were on top of the building or some other collapsed building), you might not have that network available anyway due directly to the disaster or attack in question.

So we shouldn't care if our cell phone network will fail in emergencies for one reason because it might possibly fail for other reasons? That's not very sensible. It's like saying, "Why should I wear my seatbelt when my car doesn't even have airbags?"

The whole post sounds like you're searching for reasons for me to be wrong without having a real argument.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[khallow]

Well you could be losing blood, for example.

Sucks to be you then. I still don't get why these contrived scenarios are supposed to justify spending a lot of money beefing up cell phone coverage. It is rare for an activity to be completely absent of benefit for anyone.

So we shouldn't care if our cell phone network will fail in emergencies for one reason because it might possibly fail for other reasons? That's not very sensible. It's like saying, "Why should I wear my seatbelt when my car doesn't even have airbags?"

No. I can't see that analogy. I think it's more like saying that putting a lot of money into beefing up a cell phone network still has the major problem that there are a variety of disasters that could take down the cell network anyway. You then have to spend even more money to achieve some degree of certainty that your cell network will be present and able to support a flood of emergency calls. I doubt even in a city wide emergency that you'd save enough lives to justify the cost.

It is simply better to just have a much cheaper cell network that handles routine usage and instead, make sure your large scale emergency response efforts don't depend on cell phones.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[nine-times]

Sucks to be you then. I still don't get why these contrived scenarios are supposed to justify spending a lot of money beefing up cell phone coverage. It is rare for an activity to be completely absent of benefit for anyone.

My whole point, as stated several times, is that we should be honest about the decision we're making. If you want to say, "It's not worth the money to have our telephone infrastructure robust enough to continue to operate during an emergency," then I'm not convinced that you're wrong.

However, let's be clear about it. Let's not say, "Well, emergencies never really happen and nobody needs a telephone during an emergency." That's dishonest. To give an alternate example, if you said, "It's not worth lowering the highway speed limit to 25 miles per hour. Sure, having it as high as 55 mph will mean more people die in car accidents each year, but preventing those deaths is not worth the economic and social impact of slowing car travel so much," then I wouldn't really have an argument. But don't try to argue, "Well going 25 mph is just as safe and car crashes never really happen anyway."

No. I can't see that analogy. I think it's more like saying that putting a lot of money into beefing up a cell phone network still has the major problem that there are a variety of disasters that could take down the cell network anyway.

Right, hence the analogy. "There's no point in mitigating some risks because there will still be other risks." It's a bad argument. Risks are additive, and so having multiple different kinds of risks makes it even more important to mitigate risk where possible.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[khallow]

However, let's be clear about it. Let's not say, "Well, emergencies never really happen and nobody needs a telephone during an emergency." That's dishonest.

I note that wasn't what was said. If we're going to be "clear" about this, here's what was originally said:

Anytime you have a large population in a small area all wanting to make calls, the system will be overloaded. Capacity is built for normal use (which is probably 95 or 99% of normal call volume). When there are spikes in demand exceeding this volume, the network will not work as well (or even fail). Also if the network is physically damaged (such as Hurricane Sandy) it won't carry even normal call volumes. How is this not common sesne ?

To that, you wrote:

Maybe we say, "We're ok with the cell phone network going out during an emergency, since those emergencies will be rare and the cost of making the network robust and redundant enough to handle the additional volume isn't worth being able to use your cell phone in an emergency." But then are we really ok with that? If we have a bombing in a major city and people can't really report what's going on because our telecommunications can't handle the strain, is that really alright?

And I wrote in turn:

Why do you think the answer would be anything other than "yes, it's ok"? We don't rely on the cell phone network in an emergency. Nor do we want to pay a lot extra just so that we can phone home from more emergencies. There's a huge cost here associated with this additional capacity (especially given the variety of disasters which can take out cell network capacity).

So to be clear, no one made the assertion you mention above.

But don't try to argue, "Well going 25 mph is just as safe and car crashes never really happen anyway."

As I recall the analogous case in question was a building collapsing on you in a large scale disaster. In that case, having the ability to make an immediate call worked only if a) you were conscious at the time and yet bleeding to death, and b) the overwhelmed emergency services could somehow get to you quickly and dig you out before you bled to death (so you couldn't be bleeding to death too quickly, but not too slow either), but yet c) would not have heard you in sufficient time through rival means of communication such as banging on stuff and yelling (after all, the first place they'll look for trapped people is in the rubble of collapsed buildings and the first thing they'll do when they get there is listen for trapped people). That's a very contrived situation.

No. I can't see that analogy. I think it's more like saying that putting a lot of money into beefing up a cell phone network still has the major problem that there are a variety of disasters that could take down the cell network anyway.

Right, hence the analogy. "There's no point in mitigating some risks because there will still be other risks." It's a bad argument. Risks are additive, and so having multiple different kinds of risks makes it even more important to mitigate risk where possible.

The point here is look at the context. You sorta advocated building up the cell phone network to handle the massive increase in call volume from a large scale disaster. These disasters include a considerable subset which damages or destroys the cell phone network. The risk hasn't changed, but there is a correlation between disaster and impairment of the cell network.

If you want the capacity of your overbuilt network to function in these cases, then you need to overbuild in other ways in order to insure the network still will likely function at the capacity you want.

Yet another risk which I didn't address is what happens when someone sets off bombs via cell phone triggers. Now, you might have to make a hard choice between keeping the cell phone network (

Re:uh, this is common sense

[nine-times]

I note that wasn't what was said. If we're going to be "clear" about this, here's what was originally said:

And then you quote a bunch of stuff as though you hadn't really read any of it. First, I wasn't saying you specifically said that, but you are among many people making statements similar to that. You claim you never said, "nobody needs a telephone during an emergency." and yet you quote yourself saying, "We don't rely on the cell phone network in an emergency."

That's a very contrived situation.

It's one example of how a cell phone might help you in an emergency. That situation might be rare, but if you start aggregating all of the possible rare emergency situations where a cell phone might be helpful, I think you'll find that it's probably not such a rare thing. Plus, it's not much more contrived to say, "maybe you'd be injured by conscious and emergency services wouldn't know where to look for you," than to say, "well maybe emergency services would find you if you banged on something." They're trained to listen for noise, not because they'll necessarily be able to find anyone making noise, but because *they have nothing else to go on*.

Anyway, my whole point, over and over again, is if you really are ok with the situation, then fine. Let's agree that it's not worth paying for a robust cell phone network that can function during emergencies. Let's make that very clear with everyone in the society, that you can't depend on cell phones in an emergency. But don't be evasive in our wording and pretend that having our telecommunications network fail during emergencies won't ever cost some lives. Let's just admit that we're saying, "saving those lives is too expensive."

These disasters include a considerable subset which damages or destroys the cell phone network.

First, that seems like a big assumption with no evidence behind it. Talk about a contrived situation. Yes, I suppose a nuclear bomb would knock out cell phones, but there are many kinds of emergency situations that won't knock out the cell phone network. And again, you're saying "There's no point in mitigating some risks because there will still be other risks."

Yet another risk which I didn't address is what happens when someone sets off bombs via cell phone triggers. Now, you might have to make a hard choice between keeping the cell phone network (and related emergency services) up and losing more lives due to bombs which haven't been triggered yet.

That's a totally different issue. Regardless of whether the cell phone network can handle capacity during an emergency, they could still shut down networks if they suspect it's going to be triggered by a cell phone. It's not really what we're talking about here.

I really don't see the point of arguing over this.

Says the guy who continues to argue over this despite not having good arguments.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[khallow]

You claim you never said, "nobody needs a telephone during an emergency." and yet you quote yourself saying, "We don't rely on the cell phone network in an emergency."

And I was right. Those two statements have very different meanings. Emergency crews, firefighters, and police, the bulk of the official response to disaster and such, for example, rely on radio not on cell phones. I already addressed most of your issues in my previous post, but I'll highlight a few things.

It's one example of how a cell phone might help you in an emergency. That situation might be rare, but if you start aggregating all of the possible rare emergency situations where a cell phone might be helpful, I think you'll find that it's probably not such a rare thing. Plus, it's not much more contrived to say, "maybe you'd be injured by conscious and emergency services wouldn't know where to look for you," than to say, "well maybe emergency services would find you if you banged on something." They're trained to listen for noise, not because they'll necessarily be able to find anyone making noise, but because *they have nothing else to go on*.

These things are rare. We don't have to speculate, we just look at the occurrence of actual large scale emergencies that overwhelm the local cell network infrastructure.

These disasters include a considerable subset which damages or destroys the cell phone network.

First, that seems like a big assumption with no evidence behind it.

The world has had earthquakes, tsunami, landslides, riots, explosions and fires, and power outages and such. These routinely take out cell network infrastructure. So the disasters may be rare, but the conditional probability of cell network damage given a disaster big enough to generate overwhelming call volume is not.

That's a totally different issue. Regardless of whether the cell phone network can handle capacity during an emergency, they could still shut down networks if they suspect it's going to be triggered by a cell phone. It's not really what we're talking about here.

As I already answered, "Yet another risk which I didn't address". It's a "totally different issue" which happens to be relevant precisely because of the current context, a bombing attack in a high population area. Here, you advocate substantially beefing up a cell phone network to handle emergencies such as these and yet, we might have to shut that network down when it's most needed.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[nine-times]

Emergency crews, firefighters, and police, the bulk of the official response to disaster and such, for example, rely on radio not on cell phones.

Right, so you're claiming that telephones are unimportant during an emergency.

These things are rare. We don't have to speculate, we just look at the occurrence of actual large scale emergencies that overwhelm the local cell network infrastructure.

How rare? I ask because I'm pretty sure you're just making this up. And what about other unrelated things that happen during an emergency? Someone bombs Boston, and what about a robbery that happens at the same time? Any one scenario is rare, but when you add up all the various possible rare scanarios, are they really so unrealistic?

The world has had earthquakes, tsunami, landslides, riots, explosions and fires, and power outages and such. These routinely take out cell network infrastructure.

Those aren't the only emergencies that overwhelm cellphone networks, and those events don't always damage cellphone infrastructure so as to make the infrastructure useless regardless of traffic. If you really want to argue, provide some examples and statistics to prove your point. Otherwise, stop claiming weird counter-intuitive claims.

and yet, we might have to shut that network down when it's most needed.

Wait, so are you admitting here that cell phone infrastructure is needed during emergencies?

Re:uh, this is common sense

[khallow]

Emergency crews, firefighters, and police, the bulk of the official response to disaster and such, for example, rely on radio not on cell phones.

Right, so you're claiming that telephones are unimportant during an emergency.

No, I merely noted that actual emergency workers don't rely on them. And given that the cell network currently can go down during a large scale emergency (not just any emergency), cell phones can't be currently an important part of large scale emergency response.

Let us recall that my reply was to your previous and very different characterization of my statements as "nobody needs a telephone during an emergency". You might need all sorts of things that aren't there in an emergency. For example, if you're seriously injured you need to be in an emergency room not underneath a pile of rubble.

These things are rare. We don't have to speculate, we just look at the occurrence of actual large scale emergencies that overwhelm the local cell network infrastructure.

How rare? I ask because I'm pretty sure you're just making this up. And what about other unrelated things that happen during an emergency? Someone bombs Boston, and what about a robbery that happens at the same time? Any one scenario is rare, but when you add up all the various possible rare scanarios, are they really so unrealistic?

Well, that's not a very honest answer. Where's this data that supports or undermines my point? I'm the only one doing work here.

This story indicates that "unusual events" happen a few times a year (including holidays like New Year's Eve). I don't know how many emergencies make that up, but some of them would be normal holidays.

and yet, we might have to shut that network down when it's most needed.

Wait, so are you admitting here that cell phone infrastructure is needed during emergencies?

No, I wasn't. It was a precondition of your argument. If we depend on cell phones to report problems during large scale emergencies (as you desire), then we need to consider reasonable scenarios where we have to turn off that network precisely at the time we most need it. If we don't, then it doesn't matter if we turn off the network.

Personally, I'm dissatisfied by your "honesty" in this discussion. My statements are misconstrued (your shifting equating of my observation that emergency response doesn't depend on cell phones with at least two different statements or my "admission" above about cell phone infrastructure just above); you demand hard numbers from me while simultaneously providing no support for your own side aside from a few contrived emergency scenarios and irrelevant analogies; repeatedly asking "But then are we really ok with that?" (when that has been answered a number of times to the affirmative, which I gather we somehow didn't "really" mean); and of course, there's the annoyingly dismissive and erroneous "The whole post sounds like you're searching for reasons for me to be wrong without having a real argument."

The bottom line is that cell phone networks are already expensive. Everything I've read implies that expanding them to handle rare emergency loads costs a lot and there just isn't a good case for spending that kind of money. That's the best I can say.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[nine-times]

This story [computerworld.com] indicates that "unusual events" happen a few times a year

"A few times a year" is pretty common in my book. And let's not forget that even if the outage is precipitated by a normal holiday, that doesn't preclude the possibility that people would be having emergencies during that time, and be prevented from calling for help.

Everything I've read implies that expanding them to handle rare emergency loads costs a lot and there just isn't a good case for spending that kind of money.

This is exactly what I find to be dishonest about the way you talk, right here: "there just isn't a good case". Obviously there's a good case. It could save lives. Not just "could", but "almost certainly would". If it's too expensive to justify that should be a painful unfortunate reality, and not something to be dismissed as though there's just no argument to be had.

Re:uh, this is common sense

[khallow]

This is exactly what I find to be dishonest about the way you talk, right here: "there just isn't a good case". Obviously there's a good case. It could save lives. Not just "could", but "almost certainly would". If it's too expensive to justify that should be a painful unfortunate reality, and not something to be dismissed as though there's just no argument to be had.

"Saving lives" is not automatically a "good case". You have to consider the costs as well. For example, massive expenditures can cost lives (via declining quality of life and less resources for emergency preparedness and infrastructure building) as well as save them.

Simple answer:

[Anonymous Coward]

Physics

Re:Simple answer:

[Spectre]

Simpler answer: Economics.

Re:Simple answer:

[jc42]

Physics

Economics

Nah; physics is much, much simpler than economics. Just ask any physicist. ;-)

sometimes

[Anonymous Coward]

they shut off service to prevent any other potential bombs from being detonated by mobile phone.

Re:sometimes

[oodaloop]

They also said that Marcellus Wallace threw a man out of a window for giving Mia a foot massage.

Post a source, or STFU.

Re:sometimes

[DERoss]

No, the did not. The police and wireless companies both denied that cell service was turned off.

Re:sometimes

[Peter Desnoyers]

There's a tweet from a WBZ reporter to that effect here: http://www.sbnation.com/2013/4/15/4228130/boston-marathon-explosion-cell-phone-shutdown
I don't know if it's true, though.

Re:sometimes

[arielCo]

Umm ... you're looking for the comments section at CNN.com.

Re:sometimes

[twisted_pare]

I was there, 200m from the bombs. Phone never had issues sending texts, but could not us Google Voice or regular calling to place a call out. Never had an issue with data/text however, which was useful as I texted folks asking "WTF was that?" Local hardwired wifi never skipped a beat, but sites like Boston.com and Letsrun.com tanked almost instantly.

Re:sometimes

[gl4ss]

with a gathering like a marathon you're lucky if wireless data works even with no bombs. rock festivals etc have the same problem!

Send a text..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a lot easier to squeeze a text through than it is to establish a voice connection.

Re:Send a text..

[wagnerrp]

That's because you don't squeeze text through. Text messages are placed into what is otherwise wasted padding in the periodic keep-alive packets between your cell phone and the tower. If you are connected, you can send a text message.

Re:Send a text..

[Peter Desnoyers]

I can confirm that texts were getting through just fine to runners farther up the course (in my case, near BC) when cell calls weren't going through.

Cells in ADSL modems

[dargaud]

The ADSL modem I recently got has a 'free wifi' mode which works with a password you receive at the same time than the modem, and you can use it on ANY modem from the same provider in the country. It uses a secondary channel as your own private (and protected) wifi. It's a great idea. But why don't they extend that and use the ADSL modem as a conduit for 3G/GSM/... cell ? It's probably mostly a software problem, then use the user's internet line to carry the info (without charging the user of course). Within range I have something like 8 other wifis, it could turn picocells into a reality: one per every home.

Re:Cells in ADSL modems

[autocracy]

Because I'd put something behind the modem and rate-limit, filter, or otherwise alter the traffic. The quality of the service still isn't guaranteed without some agreement.

Re:Cells in ADSL modems

[loufoque]

It's not a software problem, it's a legal one.

Re:Cells in ADSL modems

[LiENUS]

If the picocell is built into the modem and the traffic never touches your home network how on earth would you rate-limit, filter or otherwise alter the traffic? You wouldn't ever have access to it, it would hit the dsl modem and go right out your line.

Re:Cells in ADSL modems

[autocracy]

Your assumption is that you'll give me hardware and I won't alter it or use a software radio to MITM my own equipment. Neither of those is a safe bet.

Re:Cells in ADSL modems

[dargaud]

Well, they already give you hardware that has two wifi mode: one is yours to use and configure and the other one is the free semi-public one, which you can't change. Although you can disable both together. How would that be different?

Re:Cells in ADSL modems

[LiENUS]

Your assumption is it wont used signed firmware, or that the station device wont detect your interference as a poor quality channel and switch to another access point to route around it. The microcells I've used use a vpn tunnel back to the network, if the firmware is signed and the key to vpn back is within a smartcard type device and thus unextractable, how are you going to do a MITM attack when every device will immediately disregard your own connection? not to mention the fines the FCC would rain down on you for doing that (for a picocell to work it would have to be using the normal licensed spectrum and not the wifi band)

Re:Have you ever noticed that phones are for assho

[wagnerrp]

What the hell is a "sell" phone? Who the hell is Laura, and why does she live like a bird?

Cell phone?

[geirlk]

You mean that twitter/facebook/instragram update device come camera?

Nobody calls emergency services anymore, they just film the tragedy.

Re:Cell phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, there was no reason for anyone to call 911 over this bombing.

Re:Cell phone?

[geirlk]

That is true.

Although I've experienced gaggles of fudgenuts gathered around people lying either with seizures or actually literally bleeding in the street, taking photos and filming. Even go as far as commenting on their own video how "nobody is helping", where I as last responder have to help _and_ dial the emergency number.

That Sir, angers me.

PS: 1 1 3 , One-One-Three, for medical emergencies in Norway

Re:Cell phone?

[geekoid]

Funny, I couldn't help but notice all the people running towards the explosions to help.

Radio

[Anonymous Coward]

CB, and Ham for emergencies. Get it. Love it.

The CB is also a really good way to get real-time traffic updates.

Re:Radio

[k6mfw]

CB, and Ham for emergencies. Get it. Love it.

The CB is also a really good way to get real-time traffic updates.

well yes and no. You cannot break a radio transmission like you can with a phoneline or a cell system that gets overloaded. So 2-way radio is good for emergencies.

However, I have been changing my tune about ham radio that its real values are DIY/hacking/experimentation. You still have to pay a license fee (measly $14 to FCC every 10 years) and pay for equipment. You can open it because you own it (cannot do that with many cellphones) and you can modify it as you please (just keep the RF inside the ham bands). And when you have skill and talent to design/modify/implement wireless systems, you can be valuable to those who cannot.

Promoting ham radio only by emergency uses is limiting. Let's be honest, how many disasters occur that ham radio pays a key role? Not many (but don't get me wrong, many public safety officials see amateur radio operators as important resource). So all these people that get caught up in one-day ham cram and take ARES/RACES classes, then wait for the big one.... they get bored and go off and do something else. Emergency planning is important but it is not action-and-adventure where the hero ham parachutes in for the rescue.

CB can be great for traffic updates but for here in Silicon Valley the band is dead. There have been times when the highways backup beyond normal, would be great to call someone couple miles up 101 and ask what the situation is. But this is Silicon Valley and nobody comprehends frequencies less than 800 MHz.

Re:Radio

[geekoid]

What you mean to say is that YOU don't have the skill to open and mod a cell phone.

"Let's be honest, how many disasters occur that ham radio pays a key role?"
Most, is the answer there, not 'Not Many'

"they get bored and go off and do something else"
true. It's why it's important to get the involved in regular drills. Even if it's only once a year that ends in a giant picnic.

"but it is not action-and-adventure where the hero ham parachutes in for the rescue."
heh. What's that, in the sky? It's a bird, it's a plane, no it's GRAY BEARDS!

Re:Radio

[mattjh]

There are Hams at just about any foot race that's longer than around the block, emergency or not. They do runner check-ins, checkpoints and handle comms for injuries that happen on the route. We had local guys from Ohio at the race in Boston. Hams traveled from around the country, on their own dime, to assist with tornado aftermath in Joplin. Every time we get a thunderstorm, there are at least 10 check-ins on the local net for storm watch and reporting. The national weather service gets a lot of it's data from those reports. Some even have automated weather stations that send automated reports digitally. It's not publicized well, but there's a lot more HAM activity happening regularly than most realize.

Re:Radio

[k6mfw]

True, we have many activities in this area as well (much more than I can handle). I'd like to see some 20 and 30-somethings participating. Not that there is anything wrong with old guys but always need to recruit new people.

Re:Radio

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see some 20 and 30-somethings participating. .

Ham is EXPENSIVE. As a 20 something, It'll be a while until I can afford a transceiver, even a well cared for used one is outside my current budget. I'm sure that the cost and limited availability in some areas is a limiting factor. Kind of like Masons, to be one, you have to know one.

Re:Radio

[k6mfw]

What you mean to say is that YOU don't have the skill to open and mod a cell phone.

I know cellphones are hackable, but then others you cannot. Plus recent rants of "Unlock a phone, go to jail!" and other mischief, plus all those EULAs. It gets mysterious and raises questions of do you really own that phone? Any two-way radio I purchased I did not have to sign anything, except credit card to the seller.

Resilience

[Todd Knarr]

Part of it's not just whether the network fails, but how it fails. For instance, in a situation like this the network might be reconfigured to reject incoming calls to the area to keep that capacity free for people calling out. It might start throttling back voice calls to free up that capacity for emergency services and keep the data portion of the network running (and maybe drop the data portion back to 3G or even 2G so it could handle more simultaneous users). You wouldn't be able to call out, but you could still send and receive text messages. And the process for this should be in place. This kind of thing is rare and you can't predict when it'll happen, but it's a given that it will happen so the network operators should have a plan in place for what to do when it does.

And they should also be looking back to Ma Bell's studies on how to staff operators to handle phone calls. They found through a lot of study of real-world traffic that you can't staff for the average volume and successfully handle the calls. Calls tended to cluster, so if you wanted to keep wait times acceptable you had to staff for the peak volumes and accept that that meant you'd have idle capacity a lot of the time. I often get the feeling that the engineering side of the carriers understands this, but the business side doesn't quite grasp the idea of call volume not being a normal distribution.

Re:Resilience

[Todd Knarr]

Bleh. Addendum: part of the process should be an indicator on the phone that means "network service degraded". Half the problem seems to be people being unclear on the fact that the network's being swamped. A visible indication on the phone won't help the deliberately oblivious, but it at least gives those with 2 working brain cells firing in sync a clear indication that yes the carrier knows about the situation, yes they're doing what they can, no you can't expect normal operation right now so just be patient and use SMS when you can.

Re:Resilience

[twisted_pare]

During the Cold War there was a telco exchange in Northern Virginia (I forget the number) that if you dialed through would give your call Federal precedence. It was used by Congress/Senate and high up Federal employees. In the case of a national emergency, those calls would be routed first and others dropped to make way for them. This idea is nothing new. I'm sure something similar exists today with 911 or similar.

Re:Resilience

[Kjella]

I often get the feeling that the engineering side of the carriers understands this, but the business side doesn't quite grasp the idea of call volume not being a normal distribution.

No, they just want to know who's paying and if nobody is then they're going to let it fail. For many years on New Year's Eve the cell phone system choked, everybody knew it would happen but were people willing to pay for that one night in the year? Were people going to switch providers based on that day's performance? Hell no, nobody cared that their "Happy New Year" text arrived at 6AM instead of midnight. Same for every other place that is full, sold out or whatever - they're passing up business because it doesn't pay to serve the biggest peaks and have so much idle capacity so often.

Re:Resilience

[Anonymous Coward]

Rule of thumb: If a site is being ddosed by having too many users, and receive a error, they will just refresh the page and do something in another tab while they wait.
Giving the phone a indicator won't change anything, except it might result in 5% less calls.

Re:Resilience

[DerekLyons]

And they should also be looking back to Ma Bell's studies on how to staff operators to handle phone calls. They found through a lot of study of real-world traffic that you can't staff for the average volume and successfully handle the calls. Calls tended to cluster, so if you wanted to keep wait times acceptable you had to staff for the peak volumes and accept that that meant you'd have idle capacity a lot of the time. I often get the feeling that the engineering side of the carriers understands this, but the business side doesn't quite grasp the idea of call volume not being a normal distribution.

Except... Ma Bell didn't staff for peak volumes, they staffed for peak average. Even when Ma Bell was a monopoly and swimming in cash, they didn't have enough money to staff for peak volumes because that meant having (IIRC) something like 90%+ of your staff idle 90%+ of the time. (On the long distance trunks, IIRC, the peaks were Mother's Day and Christmas Day (the former far larger than the latter), and both were well over double the normal daily average.) But back then, people accepted that you weren't always able to get through as that was a fact of life and always had been. (By "back then", I mean "when I was a teen" - in the 1970's.) Nowadays however, fast computerized switches and high bandwidth trunks mean that not getting through is something that virtually never happens - leading to the unsupported belief that you're supposed to always get through... no matter what the conditions or how extreme the event.

Re:Resilience

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect they don't even need anything new to do that: I suspect they have the capability to send a blanket text message to everyone saying "Free txt msg: text messages only in/out of [area] for forseeable future". Depending on how nice they are feeling, maybe even include "No charges for text messages" or "Text messages will be charged as minutes".

Re:Resilience

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if call volume per time period is distributed normally you still want to staff above the mean of the distribution.

Re:Resilience

[Anonymous Coward]

You got the concept right, but on the technical side there's some suggestions that won't work.

and keep the data portion of the network running (and maybe drop the data portion back to 3G or even 2G so it could handle more simultaneous users
Not quite. An LTE radio is an LTE radio. It won't start being an HSPA radio just like that. Furthermore, typically, the higher the "G", the higher the spectral efficiency. What could be done though is, for example, choose not to support R99 phones (they are a bandwidth hog) and only support newer releases so as to support more users overall. A tradeoff needs to be made at some point.

You wouldn't be able to call out, but you could still send and receive text messages.
Other than proprietary methods such as iMessage and BB messenger, text messages do not use data but rather the control channel. They can bring an area to its knees pretty quickly if there's a major spike in usage.

Re:Resilience

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm thinking disable data altogether and only allow voice calling but use the bandwidth of the 4g and 3g data networks to boost the voice capacity of the overall network.

Re:Resilience

[guruevi]

Most people think that falling back onto 3G, 2G or 1G would save bandwidth but the opposite is through, the later the generation, the more efficient the data transfer becomes. 4G networks (which are as of yet unavailable in the US) are purely packet-based (voice and data) and can handle much more voice channels over a lot smaller radio bandwidth.

The problem is that the US is quickly falling behind to 3rd world standards on all aspects of society and technology.

It's typical oversubscription of a service

[Anonymous Coward]

You provide an infrastructure that runs at 95% capacity for normal daily usage because it's cheaper than providing people what they actually pay for. The result being when everyone wants to use the service they pay for at the same time the infrastructure collapses.

Prime example is residential internet connections; get everyone on one UBR to download at the same time and watch it fall over completely.

Standard corporate greed.

Re:It's typical oversubscription of a service

[Gerner]

Standard corporate greed.

It's not standard corporate greed, so much as standard consumer cheapness. It would be quite expensive to reserve bandwidth for every individual cell phone. Think about a T1 Internet circuit, 1.5 mbps, but always available for $500-$1000/month. Normal people are too cheap to commit to that kind of monthly payment for cell or internet service. In fact, most people are happy they can be oversubscribed 10+ to 1 to save cost.

Re:It's typical oversubscription of a service

[Anonymous Coward]

A prime example is government funded roads. Corporate greed and M$ $hills all over the place!

How dare they not build everyone a private road?!

Re:It's typical oversubscription of a service

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Insightful

Peer to peer alterniative

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any peer to peer alternatives available for this type of scenario?

You dont need a terrorist event for that ...

[YoungManKlaus]

silvester will do just fine (at least some years ago it was always funny to get texts somewhen at noon the next day, not such an issue any more luckily)

What an incoherent wall of fucking text

[Anonymous Coward]

Go fuck off, slashdot.

Re:What an incoherent wall of fucking text

[Gerner]

Go fuck off, slashdot.

If 14 lines of text without a paragraph break is incoherent to someone, then I would imagine that someone hasn't picked up a novel of any size recently. It's less than half a page, it has appropriate punctuation, and the sentence structures are fine. Just relax and read.

normal buildout when I worked was 20%

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for a company in upstate NY - Redcom Labs - and we manufactured CO's/PBX's/etc. Since day one (long before I started) their systems were always solid state so when they were used for CO installs, it was always in niche markets like Alaska or remote parts of the continental states. Anyways, wwhen we would spec out a quote for a customer, it was always for enough lines for 20% of the population as the peaks during normal call volumes would be covered by this amount of equipement. It didn't make sense to have a huge number of unused lines just in case of an emergency - it doesn't make financial sense unless the government is paying for it.

Obviously east-bum-fuck America doesn't always translate well to urban centers, but I can't imagine they would install more equipment than is needed during normal call volumes on the off chance you have a disaster. Their goal is to make a profit and they're gonna run their operations as slim as possible.

Mesh routing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do wonder if a good mesh routing software would be able to work in situations like that. Working over wifi and routing calls without the use of the cell network. It should really be possible since a lot of people were looking for each other although everyone was at the marathon. On the other hand I do wonder how you can establish identity in that situation.

Oy, the irony

[sl4shd0rk]

The one time we really need technology to do something besides email imgur links or annoy people on Twitter, it fails. Probably best anyway as most of the traffic I saw was just "ZOMG..first post.." drama anyway.

Next week on BoingBoing

[sootman]

Why It's So Hard For a Crowd To Leave a Burning Building Through The Only Exit Doors.

I mean really, WTF?

Re:Next week on BoingBoing

[twisted_pare]

Ever heard of Coconut Grove?

Re:Next week on BoingBoing

[motokochan]

For those who are having trouble looking it up, Cocoanut Grove fire on Wikipedia.

NCS/GETS

[Hartree]

In fact, this very problem is why there is a US government program that lets certain emergency personnel/offices have priority over normal telephone traffic.

This is also why we don't normally see phone numbers in the 710 area code.

See: http://gets.ncs.gov/program_info.html for an overview.

(Wow, I feel like I'm back on comp.dcom.telecom)

Re:NCS/GETS

[necrogram]

There's that, and there's also ruthless preemption, so that when the system is at capacity and a responder with a flagged number needs to make a call, the switch will drop someone else's call to let the responder through

Re:NCS/GETS

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Got a GETS card in my wallet right now. No trouble at all making cell phone calls from anywhere I have a signal. Now if I were to use my GETS account in a non-emergengy situation, where there's just locallized call saturation, I'd probably get my hand slapped pretty hard and have to take "refresher training" on appropriate use of GETS.

On 9/11 (I was in the Pentagon), I had to stand in line for 15-20 min at a pay phone to get a call out to my family. Even then it took 3 or 4 tries to get a circuit. After that, I got a pair of GMRS radios and got a subscription to use the local repeaters in the area

Two words: Under Provisioning.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its how networks are deployed when their purpose is to make money for the provider.

Emergency lines, Emergency frequencies

[erroneus]

Why is that so hard. We just need an emergency network for our phones is all. Why tie up the basic services?

the capacity problem

[nimbius]

gets shit thrown at it from both sides. providers dont feel the need to invest in more towers and users understandably get angry when this problem manifests in dropped calls and network outages.

to curtail the issue, emergency coverage services like COW and COLT (Cellular on Wheels, Cellular on Light Truck) have been bastardized by carriers to augment connectivity for sports events and serve as standby relays during repairs. COW and COLT were designed by the industries to respond to hurricanes and tornados but the allure of having a tower-on-wheels it understandably too budget-friendly for any carrier to pass up. oversubscription and markup are what keep cellular industries alive, just like shared hosting or airlines.
the other issue is as TFA highlights, cellular is just not as robust as say, 25 core ASTRO multi-zone digital radio...arguably because the need just isnt there. if 1 in 5 people cant make contact during an emergency its not a problem, cellphones can be borrowed or the calls can be retried. in law enforcement and emergency services, the PTT button has to work every time no matter what, as a loss of service could result in an emergency turning into a catastrophe.

finally, what i consider 'dark devices' can also create an outage automatically. fire alarms, burglary alarms, and even SIGALERT and some EAS systems (yes, EAS, its cost saving/kickback jack-assery found in flyover states all the time.) for the city/state are critically dependent on cellular networks. in the event of an emergency the activation of hundreds of these devices at once can black out the network pretty fast.

busy phone circuits affect all phones

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember reading an article about busy phone circuits, but i forgot the source. i think it was on a local news TV station. landline phones might not work well in an emergency. do people still use them?? just kidding. Calls from landline or cell phones phone have difficulty connecting because the phone circuits / computers are near full capacity during emergency.

it is easier to send a text message or e-mail with a 3G device or via free wireless at an internet hotspot like a hotel or coffee shop. post updates on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or LiveJournal if you can. do people still use MySpace?? lol but if the internet infrastructure is damaged like in an earthquake or flood, not sure what you could do besides write a post card or a telegram. anyone still use morse code with the overhead wires like I saw in the movie Balto 1, 2, or 3? Just saying.

sorry for the wall of text

FTA

[AndyKron]

FTA. The reason it's so hard to make calls in an emergency is because the government shuts down the goddamn phones!

Maybe not "shut-off", just "restricted"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if cellular carriers are still doing it, but maybe 15 or so years ago their switching systems were capable of a "restricted" mode of operation. When in that mode only selected phone numbers assigned to various sorts of authorized emergency personnel were allowed to initiate or receive calls. On a tower-by-tower basis attempts by non-authorized phones to connect and dial out were dropped/ignored as were incoming calls to those phones.

This is precisely why

[kilodelta]

I keep my amateur radio license up to date and I carry an HT with me all the time. You never know.

Re:This is precisely why

[geekoid]

FYI: the radio works even if you don't have your license.

Re:This is precisely why

[kilodelta]

Well yes - but the FCC if it still exists after a major disaster - they frown on that.

Ara ara

[Anonymous Coward]

Editor-kun, your writing skills are fucking terrible.

everyone needed to just take a deep breath

[SuperBanana]

When a bomb goes off, you do NOT need to call everyone you know to say "OMG I'm OK!!!!!!" Seriously - the panic is the problem, not the network. Unless you're hurt and need help, put the phone away and keep the airwaves clear for emergency responders - maybe text ONE person and say "hey can you put up on my FB wall that I'm ok?" In fact, go one step further and put your phone into airplane mode and save your battery life, because in a real emergency, charging the phone is going to be a bigger problem. At the very least, disable syncing services. It was amazing how many people thought it was necessary to call everyone they knew in their lives to MIGHT have been running in the marathon or lived somewhere in Boston.

My experience in cell perf after a huge earthquake

[ThePeices]

Where I live, we had this huge shallow mag 6.3 aftershock right next to the city. The cellular networks performed pretty well during the massive emergency call spike dealing with all of the dead and injured, even while dealing with the widescale infrastructure damage that had just occurred. Emergency calls were mostly available in the hours after the quake, and the two main carriers handled the load well all things considered.

We found that SMS messaging was the best method for communicating with friends and family, as voice was under heavy use at the time and best left for emergency use. SMS was good enough really, as it does not require realtime delivery.

The main telco also immediately set every payphone to allow free calling to any phone nationwide, cell or landline for weeks after, and started putting up free WiFi on the top of many payphones. ( The free WiFi is still there today )

Overall, not a bad result from the technology. Good emergency planning can and did save lives.

thats becase

[mjwalshe]

In the case of emergency CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN and so on telcos can dump normal subs so that the emergency services can use the network and also disables any mobile phone based bombs.I woudl not be surprised if this was done in Boston.

Don't forget Nextel

[arbulus]

I don't know if this is the case everywhere, but here in FL, Nextels were carried extensively by LEOs, Fire, Ambulance, first responders, etc., so when there was a major emergency (hurricane, whathaveyou) the Nextel network gave priority to those users and anyone else who also used Nextel was basically SOL.

Trying to reach your loved one who might be in the path of the storm, and one of you uses Nextel? Forget about it. You're not getting through.

I'm also going to echo others here and say that the loss of pay phones is seriously problematic, especially for disaster/emergency situations.

Profit != Capacity

[Anonymous Coward]

If mobile providers were re-investing their 10 billion/annum profit , this wouldn't be a problem.

Compared to 10 billion/annum profit:

Towers are cheap.
Radios are cheap.
Home agent infrastructure is cheap.
Spectrum is cheap.
Fiber is cheap.
Trenching is cheap.

Greed is the reason. All the tech has been there since 1995.

It's simply an emergency

[reboot246]

To quote George Carlin, "We know it's a situation. Everything is a situation."

.

Cost!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not impossible to design a phone system that can handle these eventualities by any measure. That's easy. The problem comes down to cost/benefit. Are we comfortable with our cell phone bills going up 3x or more every month to pay for wasted capacity, and maintenance upon said wasted capacity, so that in any given area, at any time, there is enough redundancy and capacity for any call spikes? That simply isn't realistic.

easy answer

[Anonymous Coward]

cell phones don't have the legally-required-by-law reliability standards of the wireline phone system (pots).

carriers can put up cheap-ass, barely adequate at 3am networks and call it good enough... so that's what they do.

But why are calls dropped?

[WaffleMonster]

I think we all get the basics of oversubscription in dense areas but one thing I never understood from news reports it seems people had active calls dropped on them. Why does that happen?

I know next to nothing about cellular TE but my understanding has been once your call has been admitted whatever bandwidth/timeslot allocated stays that way. This is not like IP networks where every packet competes anew for limited resource.

I can understand not being able to make a call but I don't understand dropped calls or conditions which essentially amount to congestive collapse.

What you can do to Help

[RobertLTux]

1 STAY OFF THE PHONE

2 Get Out of the area (find the nearest StarBucks /McDonalds/%other hotspot%)

3 Check In however you want to (ARC runs a Safe and Sound type site btw)