Alpha paging systems: any faults thus far?

John Todd jtodd at loligo.com
Wed Sep 12 03:36:25 UTC 2001



At least here on the East Coast (DC Metro region) there has been 
significant difficulty with cell phone call completion during the 
last 14 hours or so; this has been reported by various sources, and I 
won't go into the reasons or solutions to that problem; see previous 
posts today for various interpretations.

I'm wondering if anyone has experienced issues with their alpha 
paging systems, which now for a large percentage of users ride along 
the same systems as the voice traffic (i.e.: the alpha paging is 
built into the cell phone carrier and handset.)  It's also quite 
possible that even the normal alpha paging systems that are 
non-cellphone based have experienced higher than normal traffic, 
leading to difficulties with completions or significant delays - I'm 
speculating here.  I'm sure that the NYC region has seen quite a jump 
in two-way alpha paging activity today, as an example.

Brief experimentation showed that Verizon's email-to-cellphone 
service for handsets in the MD/DC area is functional (sample size=1) 
but it perhaps would be reasonable for others to chime in as to how 
their service is performing, as many of us rely upon this system for 
notifications.  If we can establish if there are any faults in this 
system it will perhaps save some of us more difficulty in the next 
day or so.  In the best case, it will create a number of test pages 
going through the system so that you at least can say with some 
certainty that it works/doesn't work, and if the latter you'll be 
compelled to stick close to a nice warm screen this fine spring 
night, staring at little green dots, waiting for them to become 
little red dots.

Even a number of you who have NOC staffs 24x7 still keep something 
tied to an electronic paging system of some sort.  Good for you if 
you don't; don't clutter the list with smug replies.

JT



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