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
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Peter Beckman Internet Guy
beck...@angryox.com http://www.angryox.com/
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