On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 10:59:47AM -0400, Brandt, Ralph wrote: > One of the first things cellular companies can do is stop overselling > cellular. The second is end or raise the price significantly on > unlimited plans, both voice and data. Go to what the landlines called, > USS, that is you pay for every minute.... Even if that charge is small, > it will drive usage down. > > Otherwise on a bad day people will die waiting for the yackers to get > off the call phone so they can call 911. Hopefully it will not be on > VOIP and the internet is down.
A few years back, I was working late on the top floor of one of the Yahoo mission college buildings during an earthquake. It felt really dramatic; I was on the 9th floor and the lights were swinging back and forth and yeah. So, I went outside (who knows how bad it was) figured out it wasn't that bad, and so before going home, I decided to call some people to tell them I was okay. Of course, it was as you describe, I couldn't get through. what did I do? I sent a text message. It got through and I got an answer back in about the usual amount of time it takes someone to respond to a sms text. It seems like SMS might be a reasonable backup during these periods of high load.