"In this age of cheap commoditized consumer electronics and advanced mobile technology, why can't all the people of a city make contact during an emergency?
Simple: it's too expensive.
Keep this in mind when trading in your POTS service for VoIP service over the internet. Discounting the local loop which is often the same in both cases, POTS is extremely reliable while VoIP over the public internet, well, isn't. But apparently people that switch to VoIP don't mind the reduced likelihood of being able to make calls during the next large scale emergency.
Yes! I agree 100%. The key words in that above statement were "cheap commoditized." The reason satellite phones work in big disaster areas (other than the fact that the entire infrastructure in the affected area is comprised of a solar powered satellite and a subscriber's hand set with a remote base station(s) somewhere else in the world) is simple; not everyone and their cousin has one to use.
Did I miss the memo announcing the Slashdot commentary section had been extended to the NANOG mailing list? It is one thing to expand on a story with useful insights, but this entire thread is just restating the obvious for the sake of hearing your own voice (or the digital equivalent thereof). If I wanted to read the uninformed reactions of random people to random news stories wondering why cell phone circuits fill up during natural disasters I would go to slashdot and click "Read More...". This stuff doesn't even come close to being NANOG worthy, let alone on-topic or appropriate. Note: nothing personal to those being quoted. -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)