Technology

The Truth about Designing Cell Phone and Other Networks

Things at the Boston Marathon Finish Line in 1910 were much calmer—and simpler—than the 2013 edition sans cell phones and other wireless devices. Author: Unknown. (Image credit: Wikipedia).

As was demonstrated by the tragic events in Boston April 2013, cell phone networks cannot accommodate every potential caller or texter using a mobile access device in times of peak load usage—such as during a crisis occurring in real-time on television and social media. Erroneously, some pundits at the time ascribed the outage to a co-conspiracy to take down the public wireless networks. Or an action by the civil authorities to thwart additional remote control saboteurs as has happened in Spain and other places. However, the simple truth is that demand far outstripped capacity for a time in Massachusetts due to the fact that mobile phone networks are designed to function with a typical level of subscriber activity—calls, text, mobile web, etc. When virtually everyone in the vicinity of the finishline of the Boston Marathon unlocked their iPhone or Samsung Galaxy smartphone and started to communicate the unfolding story to the outside world, it came as no surprise to network designers at the mobile operators that the infrastructure slowed to a crawl then ceased to work for a time. But this was news to the general public.