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Another reason to keep your landline. During major events, cell phone networks are quickly overwhelmed while wired phone lines still work.
The Associated Press is reporting minutes ago that a law enforcement official has ordered all cellphone service in the Boston area temporarily suspended to prevent any possibility of remote detonations of any other improvised explosive devices. But we have our doubts and in fact was able to reach one of our Boston readers by cell phone in downtown Boston just a moment ago.
“I can’t make calls on Verizon without getting a fast busy signal, but I am getting calls regularly at the moment,” reports Jim, one of our regular readers. “The cell networks are totally jammed with everyone on the phone in this city.”
Jim says a number of his co-workers had no idea there were two explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon this afternoon, but word-of-mouth office gossip spread the news over the last hour or so.
“Landlines are working fine, which is another reason you cannot and should not rely on cell phones alone during a major news event or disaster, because they are highly vulnerable to capacity crushes,” Jim said. “Our Internet access at work has also slowed to an absolute crawl and you cannot access a lot of local news websites, so we’ve watched the coverage on over the air television.”
Numerous press reports speculate the two explosions that killed two and injured at least two dozen were the result of some type of explosive device, but law enforcement officials have refused to confirm those reports so far.
As of 5:15pm EDT, Sprint and Verizon Wireless reported they were attempting to maintain service as best as possible despite the flood of wireless calls, and no carrier has confirmed they have been asked to switch off service.
“We are experiencing call blocking due to what’s happening,” Mark Elliott, a Sprint spokesman told the Boston Globe. “The network is blocking calls because the number of calls coming in exceeds the capacity. There’s no way the network can handle that kind of traffic.”
Elliott is asking cell phone users to text messages to friends and loved ones and avoid voice calling until capacity improves. This can keep lines open and clear for emergency and law enforcement officials.
Verizon Wireless, meanwhile, issued a statement, saying: “Verizon Wireless has been enhancing network voice capacity to enable additional calling in the Copley Square area of Boston. Customers are advised to use text or email to free up voice capacity for public safety officials at the scene. There was no damage to the Verizon Wireless network, which is seeing elevated calling and data usage throughout the region since the explosions occurred.”
Update 5:54pm EDT: The Associated Press has officially retracted their earlier story. There has been no request to suspend cell phone service, but carriers are impacted by heavy call volumes.
I have no respect for and no heart for Verizon. Verizon doesn’t even care about wanting to keep their wireline landline network and be mostly only a wireless network even at times of worst tragedies happening in the past and future. Verizon really is forcing all the wireline landline customers to accept only having wireless service for their phone service in the future is totally unacceptable. I know AT&T is also doing it to their own wireline landline customers as well. Verizon and AT&T would have their wireless network being jammed too quickly when a big tragedy is happening and… Read more »
They’re both corporations, ask them and they’ll tell you straight out.. their only responsibility is to their shareholders and their bottom line.
As long as nobody wants the government to ‘interfere’ by regulating the market for competition, or requiring specific public needs to be met in exchange for the use of public resources such as the spectrum they sell to the highest bidder, then this is what you get.
Enjoy, it’s going to get worse before it gets better as they merge and consolidate further.
Nobody has the bandwidth to keep a network going under infinite load.
And while the load in Boston was not infinite, the point is: ALL networks have finite capacity, and there will ALWAYS be emergencies that exceed that capacity, regardless of how big you build your network. If you think the government can do better, you’re mistaken. Physical spectrum is finite — even if the gov’t owned ALL of it, there would eventually come a time when the demand would exceed the capacity.
It’s not a matter of corporate greed — its a matter of physics.
Bad choice of examples. There really aren’t any applications in existence today which could overwhelm residential fiber, though doubtless sketchy providers would overcentralize and skimp on the backhaul at some point, causing occasional total failures. There’s a biiig difference between finite wireless and finite wireline networks. Several orders of magnitude. Comparing wireless and wireline are like comparing a game of softball to launching a rocket. The telcos have chosen to take the money promised for wireline networks and run fiber to their cell sites instead. Each residence should have the capacity that a whole cell site enjoys to itself.
There’s a reason to keep POTS and OTA TV. The DHS will soon declare mobile phones as devices of terrorism, The FCC will have to scrap the incentive auctions.
SEND TEXT MESSAGES. These will almost certainly go through. In the event of an emergency, do not attempt to make voice calls. This will contribute to swamping the networks.
Good advice.