In a twist of irony, perhaps dichotomy (or perhaps both), the widespread usage of cell phones has turned out to be both a boon and a bane in the hours immediately following the terrorist attacks and explosions in London earlier today.
As might be expected in this wireless age, cell phone calls, both inbound and outgoing as loved ones sought both reassurance and to reassure, skyrocketed across the United Kingdom and beyond immediately following the explosions. Wireless network operators begged the public’s understanding when encountering network overload issues, and some network operators had to put emergency processes into place to ensure enough bandwidth for emergency calls.
Vodafone issued a statement saying that “Following the major incident in London today, Vodafone London switches are at capacity (which is very rare) so we’re having to go into ‘access overload’ procedures, which means freeing up a proportion of capacity across London to ensure the police and emergency services can communicate.”
“We can confirm that, due to the number of high calls currently being made on the Orange network, some of its customers in London may experience difficulties making calls on their first attempt and may have to try several times before they get connected,” added a spokesperson for the Orange network.
However, at the same time, many were using their cell phones not to place calls, but to take pictures of the devestation, providing a real-time pictography of such a disaster unlike any other. These pictures, either emailed on the spot or later downloaded, made their way to websites and blogs in mere hours, providing a timely view into the disaster on what amounted to a people’s media underground.
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Pictures of a double-decker bus being blown up, of victims trapped in a subway train underground, and of the scenes of chaos in the aftermath were but some of the photos which made their way to the Internet in record time, thanks to camera phones.
Said Kenny Irby, of the journalist school the Poynter Institute, “The proliferation of cell phones and digital cameras … have led to a great deal more documentation added to the news stream.”
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I think the reason for blocking cellphones is mentioned in this article: by Al Sunshine given on CBS4 sometime back. Cellphones can be used to trigger bomb blasts remotely (read ‘nationally’ for a roaming-enabled cellphone facility).
So if they had no subscribers using their networks they’d complain, then when they do get used like crazy they complain that they’re running at capacity. Cheese with you whine gents? Phones that can take pictures, record video, play mp3’s…with networks that can’t handle phone calls under high demand. Perhaps they’ll re-focus on what parts of their network and service offerings REALLY need attention.
I wonder how well the Blackberry users faired during this whole thing? Text systems probably piggy back off of the same band width.