Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake

Wed Aug 31 01:12:51 UTC 2005

> >>"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.

Did I miss the memo announcing the Slashdot commentary section had been 
extended to the NANOG mailing list? It is one thing to expand on a story 
with useful insights, but this entire thread is just restating the obvious 
for the sake of hearing your own voice (or the digital equivalent 
thereof). If I wanted to read the uninformed reactions of random people to 
random news stories wondering why cell phone circuits fill up during 
natural disasters I would go to slashdot and click "Read More...". This 
stuff doesn't even come close to being NANOG worthy, let alone on-topic or 
appropriate.

Note: nothing personal to those being quoted.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)