On Tue, 20 Jan 2009, Jack Carrozzo wrote:
Cell networks held up reasonably well for voice, though SMS and MMS delivery times approached an hour during the event. Switch load in almost the entire US was higher than midnight on New Years (which is generally the highest load of the year).
Our network has been preparing since June, and I assume likewise for others.
Unfortunately for me Sprint did not seem to prepare or have enough capacity for Voice, SMS or Data access. No live Twitter blogging! While I was able to get a few (maybe 5 between 10am and 2pm) text messages out while standing near the Washington Monument, calls and data were an impossibility, and SMS only seemed to have capacity available during lulls in the Inaugural activity. It was disappointing as a customer -- I'm sure that, had the capacity been there, the revenue from that single event would have made a significant impact on any of the carrier's revenue, at least for the month.
-Jack Carrozzo (Engineer at $large cell company whose policy doesn't allow me to specify)
(Google spills the beans!) I'm curious if you can find out -- did the record traffic positively affect revenue for that period compared to last year at the same time, or even last week on the same day? And from a more technical standpoint, did your $large cell company put up temporary towers? I'm curious as to how your company added capacity to handle the event, as well as how many "Network Busy" messages customers got, if any. I know I got more of those messages than I did successful communications. Beckman --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Beckman Internet Guy beckman@angryox.com http://www.angryox.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------