inauguration streams review

Wed Jan 21 18:29:35 UTC 2009

On Tue, 20 Jan 2009, Jack Carrozzo wrote:

> Cell networks held up reasonably well for voice, though SMS and MMS
> delivery times approached an hour during the event. Switch load in
> almost the entire US was higher than midnight on New Years (which is
> generally the highest load of the year).
>
> Our network has been preparing since June, and I assume likewise for others.

  Unfortunately for me Sprint did not seem to prepare or have enough
  capacity for Voice, SMS or Data access.  No live Twitter blogging!

  While I was able to get a few (maybe 5 between 10am and 2pm) text messages
  out while standing near the Washington Monument, calls and data were an
  impossibility, and SMS only seemed to have capacity available during lulls
  in the Inaugural activity.

  It was disappointing as a customer -- I'm sure that, had the capacity been
  there, the revenue from that single event would have made a significant
  impact on any of the carrier's revenue, at least for the month.

> -Jack Carrozzo
> (Engineer at $large cell company whose policy doesn't allow me to specify)

  (Google spills the beans!)  I'm curious if you can find out -- did the
  record traffic positively affect revenue for that period compared to last
  year at the same time, or even last week on the same day?

  And from a more technical standpoint, did your $large cell company put up
  temporary towers?  I'm curious as to how your company added capacity to
  handle the event, as well as how many "Network Busy" messages customers
  got, if any.  I know I got more of those messages than I did successful
  communications.

Beckman
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Peter Beckman                                                  Internet Guy
beckman at angryox.com                                 http://www.angryox.com/
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