VoIP vs POTS (was Re: Operation Ghost Click)

Thu May 3 19:32:28 UTC 2012

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 12:25 PM, Luke S. Crawford <lsc at prgmr.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 10:59:47AM -0400, Brandt, Ralph wrote:
>> One of the first things cellular companies can do is stop overselling
>> cellular.  The second is end or raise the price significantly on
>> unlimited plans, both voice and data.  Go to what the landlines called,
>> USS, that is you pay for every minute....  Even if that charge is small,
>> it will drive usage down.
>>
>> Otherwise on a bad day people will die waiting for the yackers to get
>> off the call phone so they can call 911.  Hopefully it will not be on
>> VOIP and the internet is down.
>
> A few years back, I was working late on the top floor of one of the Yahoo
> mission college buildings during an earthquake.  It felt really dramatic;
> I was on the 9th floor and the lights were swinging back and forth and
> yeah.   So, I went outside (who knows how bad it was)  figured out it
> wasn't that bad, and so before going home, I decided to call some people
> to tell them I was okay.  Of course, it was as you describe, I couldn't
> get through.
>
> what did I do?  I sent a text message.  It got through and I got an
> answer back in about the usual amount of time it takes someone to respond
> to a sms text.
>
> It seems like SMS might be a reasonable backup during these periods of
> high load.

Good point. SMSes seem pretty congestion friendly since they're
usually riding control channels anyway, and can be queued up and
delivered when capacity is there (no channel reservation needed).

--j