Telecom Collapse?

Skywing Skywing at valhallalegends.com
Fri Dec 5 15:31:27 UTC 2008


Mobiles are usually (much) cheaper than a landline in such places.  Inbound calls are usually free too, so they are becoming quite common (relatively), even in underdeveloped areas, at least according to my understanding.

- S

-----Original Message-----
From: David Cantrell [mailto:david at cantrell.org.uk] 
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2008 9:01 AM
To: Jack Bates
Cc: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: Telecom Collapse?

On Thu, Dec 04, 2008 at 11:08:49AM -0600, Jack Bates wrote:

> 911 services are heavily used when a geographical area has an emergency, 
> and that emergency usually includes not having power.

Yes, and it usually involves several thousand people all phoning to
report the same damned thing, clogging up the emergency service's lines
so that *other* emergencies (like, say, someone having a heart attack)
don't get dealt with.

> Unless you live in a natural disaster prone location.

So don't do that.  It's really rather silly.

I've always thought that people who choose to live on flood plains or on
the side of active volcanos etc are at least a little bit crazy.  Of
course, if they're so poor that they don't have any choice (Bangladesh,
perhaps) then they can't afford the non-existent POTS infrastructure
anyway - but someone in the village might have a mobile.

>                                                        Or if your 
> grandmother's alert bracelet requires a phone line for notification.

That's no reason for almost anyone to have a POTS line, because almost
everyone doesn't live with their grandmother, and almost all
grandmothers don't have alert bracelets.

-- 
David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

comparative and superlative explained:

<Huhn> worse, worser, worsest, worsted, wasted





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