[aprssig] Cell phone and Pager alerts

[Daron J. Wilson]

> 
>    As someone who lives in an area where cell capacity can't keep up
> with subscribers, I can just imagine how this works.
> 
> 1)  An emergency occurs
> 2)  The system sends out alerts to thousands of cell phones, all at once.
> 3)  All of the cells become overloaded, and the calls drop.
> 4)  People start hearing about the emergency through other means -
> radio, TV, the net - and start calling up their loved ones.  Well, they
> try to.
> 5)  All of the people who really need to be contacted - doctors,
> firefighters, emergency responders - can't be contacted, because most of
> the calls are being dropped by the overloaded system.

It was absolutely fascinating to me that some folks responding to the
Katrina incident were rendered incommunicado because their Blackberry
devices didn't work.  Folks...these devices are wonderful for
communications.  Cell phones, Nextel, paging, wireless PDA's, etc.  However,
if you do not have control over the system and the ability to support it,
why in the hell would you be putting it in your plan as your emergency
notification system?

Count on systems you can control and maintain, not systems out of your
control.

73
N7HQR