That's a good question. Is the net really a criticial resource? If a life gets saved through involvement of the internet, it is news. Lifes are saved by calling for assistence through the telephone network every day all over the world as a matter of routine.
Well, it's more a question of what you want the Internet to become? We can't expect to have better quality than the most critical application that we run over it....
It's not how much something is used, but how bad it would be to go without it. During september 11th, the phone service didn't work very well, and the internet did a lot better. I think just about anyone would have traded the latter for the former in a second.
I think we are using the word "emergency" with different meanings here. Assume that a nation is cut of from it's Internet access in one way or the other due to war, natural disasters etc. In these scenarios a not functioning Internet might actually be a problem due to the time of the outage.
In the event of a emergency, I would very much like to be as able to reach my bank via the net as walking into their offices.
Yes, because banks are such a critical resource when there is an emergency...
If there was a natural disaster and I could not reach my banks office I would very much like to be able to use the on-line bank instead...
that was in the good old days when business was booming. I'm sure they're cutting corners left right and center at the moment.
Agreed - and this is where I think we have real problem.... - kurtis -