Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake

Tue Aug 30 23:32:50 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.

Yes!  I agree 100%.   The key words in that above statement were 
"cheap commoditized." The reason satellite phones work in big 
disaster areas (other than the fact  that the entire infrastructure 
in the affected area is comprised of a  solar powered satellite and a 
subscriber's hand set with a remote base station(s) somewhere else in 
the world) is simple;   not everyone and their cousin has one to use.

Why?  Because they're too expensive!

Cell phones have trained the public in to accepting lower levels of 
phone service.  Low cost equals high market adaptation, and in most 
cases, lower QoS.

-Jerry