Amateur Radio - When All Else Fails!
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This is a link to an article on CNET on how the DC area cellular system was overwhelmed by the folks visiting DC for The Woman's March last week end.
The Parade Marshall's were unable to use their phones for coordination and relied solely upon their HAM radio escorts abandoning their phones.
Per the article all of the major carriers poured millions into upgrading their systems just for the inauguration. If I remember correctly more folks showed up for the march then the inauguration.
According to the article "Phone calls were dropped and text messages didn't get sent."
https://www.cnet.com/news/womens-march-overwhelms-mobile-network-in-dc/#...
When all else fails
Maybe we shouldn't have been so quick to remove all those 1960s telephone booths from the streets when cell phones came along. There's a lot to be said for good old "wired" communication land lines to back up the portable wireless. I'll take an ethernet wire connection to an internet router and a land line anytime over a WiFi or cellular connection if I don't require mobile communications.
POTS
I suppose many people don't remember lifting the handset on Christmas morning and getting a "fast busy" or even no tone at all.
Half the problem is that we've come to expect that everyone has a phone in their pocket and that we can mostly contact them at any time.
Giving that up for the day is like giving up on driving your own car to work, sure you can muddle through but it turned a half hour commute into a three hour one for me.