North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake

  • From: Jerry Pasker
  • Date: Tue Aug 30 19:35:32 2005 


On 30-aug-2005, at 22:08, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote:




"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.



Why? Because they're too expensive!



Cell phones have trained the public in to accepting lower levels of
phone service. Low cost equals high market adaptation, and in most
cases, lower QoS.



-Jerry