Natural and manmade disasters are always going to overload wireless networks as frantic people try to contact loved ones, find out what the hell is happening and in today’s society, update their status, comment and upload video to social-media networks.
Yesterday’s earthquake along the East Coast once again showed that even if the network can withstand the assault relatively unscathed, voice calls can overwhelm the networks when everyone who is impacted is trying to connect. SMS volumes increased as well, but the network could handle those messages. Syniverse processed more than 220 million SMS messages in the two hours following the earthquake, a 15% increase. During peak texting times, traffic increased 21% from the previous day. The texts went through. Cellular networks also got bogged down earlier this month when a violent storm burst through the Indiana State Fair, killing seven people and injuring many more.
So maybe today, when things have calmed down, it is time for CTIA and the individual operators to remind people that during a disaster, it’s better to text or email. People will still always try to make a phone call during frightening times – it’s natural. But a quick “I’m OK, R U?” between hitting the redial button might be the way to bring comfort faster.
I realize that operators might resist sending this message to their subscribers because text messaging is a “best effort” service instead of an essential service like 911 calls, but the fact of the matter is that there are no guarantees in times of emergencies.
On another note, the earthquake naturally brought about calls for a nationwide public-safety network, an issue that some in government have said they wanted to address before the 10-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Whether yesterday’s event makes a material difference remains to be seen. Nevertheless, I am thankful that I am not writing a piece about first responders who couldn’t communicatec when they needed to.
