Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake

Tue Aug 30 23:12:55 UTC 2005

On 30-aug-2005, at 22:08, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote:

> "In this age of cheap commoditized consumer electronics and  
> advanced mobile technology, why can't all the people of a city make  
> contact during an emergency?

Simple: it's too expensive.

Keep this in mind when trading in your POTS service for VoIP service  
over the internet. Discounting the local loop which is often the same  
in both cases, POTS is extremely reliable while VoIP over the public  
internet, well, isn't. But apparently people that switch to VoIP  
don't mind the reduced likelihood of being able to make calls during  
the next large scale emergency.