The issue here is not the failure of the cell site, it is the 10 million people that all try to use their cell phones at once. It takes days for people to get their "urgent calls through" before the load goes down enough to have any hope of getting in. But like in Haiti, even after a few days, the emergency persisted and still everyone needed to use their phones for urgent requirements and so the load on the few hundered cell channels persisted....
At least until most people's batteries went dead (due to no power) and only after most of those phones became useless was the demand low enough for those still with enough charge to get a call through.
Again, this is my assumption, not known to be fact. But the fact of cellphone LOAD after a wide area emergency totally blocking service is pretty much fact.
Bob, WB4APR
-----Original Message----- From: Gregg Wonderly [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2011 5:49 PM To: Bob Bruninga Cc: 'i8cvs'; [email protected]; 'Dave Guimont'; 'Amsat - BBs' Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] Re: FM satellites
On 7/6/2011 4:30 PM, Bob Bruninga wrote:
In emergency situation novadays a cell-phone is much much better and reliable.
I think there are a lot of people in Haiti that might disagree
Unfortunately, we have a lot of people with ham licenses who have never understood or seen the complexity behind cellular networks to understand how fragile they actually are. Sure, the cell site is wireless to you, but it has power and wired telephony requirements that put it several steps on the risk ladder above a ham repeater, and extremely high risk for failure compared to simplex radio comms.
Gregg