On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 8:33 PM, Bob Bruninga [email protected] wrote:
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.
http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2010/03/faster-mobile-broadband-driven-b...
Though I agree with you to some extent (certainly where I live!), the explosion of smartphones will drive the networks to be able to handle larger capacities and you will be able to get through faster.
I truly believe RF's real value in an emergency is that anyone can setup a communication station in minutes because the barrier to entry is very small, i.e. its the response time which is its greatest asset.
-aps (KC2ZSX)