Preparing Computer and Cellular Networks For a Hurricane 114
CWmike writes "As Hurricane Gustav approaches the US Gulf Coast, IT lessons learned from the devastating Hurricanes Katrina and Rita that smashed New Orleans and other areas in 2005 are on the minds of many worried IT managers. David Avgikos, president of Digimation Inc., a 3-D digital animation software company in St. Rose, Louisiana, said, 'We don't have to be told twice.' Meanwhile, the nation's major cellular network providers say that they too are prepared, having learned from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Still, they offer some helpful tips for dealing with what is expected to be a category-three hurricane when it hits: use text vs. calling on your cell phone, and if you use a cordless for your landline, ditch it for a corded model so that it will still work if there are power outages."
Re:Ditch cordless? How about power backup? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you have an example of a cordless phone that works when the power is out? I've never seen one. Keep in mind it's all well and good to have a battery in the phone, but the base station needs power to be able to transmit too.
text vs. calling (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Text vs. Voice (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the point is that text can queue and be delivered when it's ready (the most obvious example being you can text someone when their phone is switched off with no issues). Voice doesn't, so is unsuitable for a network with questionable reliability.
Answer: not for a long time (Score:5, Insightful)
You see, people incorrectly assume that prices are tied to costs, and that when costs go down, prices go down. That's a lie that businesses have been foisting on the populace for decades because they aren't telling you the whole truth. Economics shows us different.
Prices are tied to supply and demand. When demand goes up, prices go up. When demand goes down, prices go down. Supply is the opposite. Supply is up, prices down, supply down prices up.
The supply for text messages is basically near infinity, and is not changing. Therefore only changes in demand will change prices. Now, have you noticed that prices are going up lately, plans are getting higher, and they are looking at 15c a message rates now? Demand is going up, of course. The cell phone market is saturated, but text messaging is still a growth sub-industry as more teens get phones and more people try texting.
We are willing to pay these rates because the market will bear it. What's worse is that they still easily allow overages. I put a block on my son's cell phone for texting, because the monthly unlimited rate to text on verizon is outrageous and he can't control his texting. We got him a new phone to replace his old one, and we found out he had texting back and had started texting again. He ran up a $64 bill on texting alone! We called Verizon and they found out the block was "accidentally lifted" with the new phone and they refunded us the money. Of course they refunded the money, because they conveniently dropped it "by mistake" and they got caught being sleazy. How many people would just pay the bill? And how many people are willing to pay $20 a month just so they don't have to pay $64 a month? All the major telecoms take advantage of this on purpose, and it goes to their bottom line.
To fix this problem, you need to choke off demand. The market will have to saturate the with texting so that there are no more new customers. Instead of competing to get more new customers, they are competing to get customers away from other companies. That's typically when prices start coming down. Right now Verizon and Sprint offer $100 talk and text all you like plans, and there is a company that just came into the area called MetroPCS which offers the same plan for $40. The cell phone market is saturated, so now you are going to see some price competition. Because texting piggy backs on phone plans, you'll see that begin to drop.
The process would accelerate if we had more competition, and if they would stop allowing phones to be tied to a specific carrier and forced companies to allow us to chose the phone and the plan. The justice department and the SEC need to put some pressure on and stop allowing cell phone company mergers.
Disaster preparedness lessons (Score:1, Insightful)
Katrina showed a basic problem with emergency generators in New Orleans. If the gen set and fuel tank were installed underground, they got flooded out. The emergency operations center had theirs mounted on the roof--where it was knocked out by flying debris. There's no truly safe place in a below-sea-level city when a hurricane hits.
TFA mentions their radios couldn't interoperate because of being on different frequencies. The version I heard (from a FEMA rep) is that New Orleans was one of the first to adopt the "fully interoperable" trunked radio systems, courtesy of post-9/11 grants to "fix" the inter-agency communications problems. When their EOC went down for lack of power, the system wouldn't work at all--nobody could talk to anybody on the trunked radios without the control centers working, and there isn't a quick, viable work-around as there was with the old analog radios (the sherriff's car could serve as a temporary command center, using a standard mobile radio set).
I hope they already have their disaster response on site and the evacuations under way. Katrina's biggest lesson is that when the storm hits and the water rises, it's too late to do any good. Like the Boy Scouts, the motto is "Be Prepared"--before disaster strikes!
Re:here is how to fix it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except such an emergency communications network already exists, with their own frequencies and emergency communications capability. Activation is automatic, so the government doesn't have to do anything, and testing is done on a regular basis during non-emergencies. And the participants pay for the equipment, testing, etc. themselves.
It's called "amateur radio".
Primary purpose is providing emergency communications. During off times, the equipment is tested by regular communications, contests, and field days (the latter basically practicing "roughing it" - generators, portable antennas, etc).
For local communications, there's the VHF/UHF and other bands, and the HF bands to help pass communications long distances easily. (Only problem with the HF bands is BPL, which disables the receiver from being able to receive and pass on messages...)
Costs the government nothing, and emergency messages passed from surviving families to relatives outside the area are often passed on cost free (absorbed by the message-passer).