November 2, 2012
A news story in today's local paper stated that over 25% of the cellular telephone sites from Virginia to Maine went down, or were rendered inoperable during the Hurricane Sandy event, and as of today, 15% of them are still inoperable. Many of these sites were running on generator power for the last few days, and simply have run out of fuel, and the rest suffered severe damage from flooding or wind damage. This has had a huge impact on revenue for businesses that have dropped conventional telephone service (POTS) in favor of wireless, which is much less dependable than POTS.
To me, this would indicate that the Cell Phone industry is not prepared to respond to emergency events that can potentially harm or even destroy their infrastructure that so many gullible people now depend on for vital communications. They seem to put very few resources into maintaining reliability into their systems for the good of the public who depend on them.
The TV broadcast industry has always taken this aspect of their operations very seriously due to their mandatory participation in the Emergency Alert System, which the Cell Phone industry is not burdened with other than access to the 911 emergency communications network. That commitment itself is nothing more than a few rack-mounted computers that interface Cellular sites with the land-line 911 system.
One would think that with the huge profit margins they enjoy, they could make the systems a little more resilient to issues like storms, flooding. and other natural disasters. There is a push going on in Washington D.C. to shrink the TV broadcast spectrum once again. They are essentially asking TV Broadcasters to surrender their spectrum, and in essence their business to the Cell Phone and Broadband industry for a one time payment, and threatening those who don't with channel sharing and other intimidating methods to cripple their business model to the point of relegating it into the history books in favor of the Broadband Robber Barons.
With so much political and financial influence that is enjoyed by the Broadband industry, it would seem that free broadcast TV has a bleak future ahead indeed. With only about 3,000 TV stations in this country, their political influence is very small at best, and the chances of limiting the damage done to this industry is not very good at this time. The only thing that could have much of an impact on slowing or stopping this trend is the American Public, and this would have to be accomplished by the political influence of the voters, and users of free broadcast TV.
Unfortunately, the majority of these users are not even aware that this is happening, and have no idea that their free TV they depend for news, emergency notifications and general entertainment is under attack by the broadband industry. The users of this forum should band together and start a letter writing campaign, and use their voting influence to vote out any politician who supports the destruction of broadcast TV in favor of a for profit industry who gives back very little for their use of the American public's radio spectrum.
We should demand that adequate broadcast spectrum be set aside for use by the TV broadcast industry to ensure its survival for those who cannot afford broadband access. Taking this resource away from this group of the American public for the profits of an industry who uses a publicly owned resource for profit should be prevented in any way possible. They use the publicly owned radio spectrum for huge profits, and then give back very little to the American Public in return, whereas TV broadcasters have always given back to the public for their use of the public's radio spectrum.
I propose that the forum support some type of form letter that could be downloaded, printed and filled out by each member, and then sent to his or her Congressional representatives in protest to the wholesale giving away of a publicly owned resource for profit.
Technology advances always have unexpected consequences that are unforeseen, but this is fairly obvious, and instances of the inadequacies and lack of reliability have been seen in previous natural disasters of the recent past. Hurricane Katrina is the most recent catastrophe that showed just how vulnerable the Cellular Phone system is to failure during natural disasters, and just how little the industry re-invests in reliability.
A news story in today's local paper stated that over 25% of the cellular telephone sites from Virginia to Maine went down, or were rendered inoperable during the Hurricane Sandy event, and as of today, 15% of them are still inoperable. Many of these sites were running on generator power for the last few days, and simply have run out of fuel, and the rest suffered severe damage from flooding or wind damage. This has had a huge impact on revenue for businesses that have dropped conventional telephone service (POTS) in favor of wireless, which is much less dependable than POTS.
To me, this would indicate that the Cell Phone industry is not prepared to respond to emergency events that can potentially harm or even destroy their infrastructure that so many gullible people now depend on for vital communications. They seem to put very few resources into maintaining reliability into their systems for the good of the public who depend on them.
The TV broadcast industry has always taken this aspect of their operations very seriously due to their mandatory participation in the Emergency Alert System, which the Cell Phone industry is not burdened with other than access to the 911 emergency communications network. That commitment itself is nothing more than a few rack-mounted computers that interface Cellular sites with the land-line 911 system.
One would think that with the huge profit margins they enjoy, they could make the systems a little more resilient to issues like storms, flooding. and other natural disasters. There is a push going on in Washington D.C. to shrink the TV broadcast spectrum once again. They are essentially asking TV Broadcasters to surrender their spectrum, and in essence their business to the Cell Phone and Broadband industry for a one time payment, and threatening those who don't with channel sharing and other intimidating methods to cripple their business model to the point of relegating it into the history books in favor of the Broadband Robber Barons.
With so much political and financial influence that is enjoyed by the Broadband industry, it would seem that free broadcast TV has a bleak future ahead indeed. With only about 3,000 TV stations in this country, their political influence is very small at best, and the chances of limiting the damage done to this industry is not very good at this time. The only thing that could have much of an impact on slowing or stopping this trend is the American Public, and this would have to be accomplished by the political influence of the voters, and users of free broadcast TV.
Unfortunately, the majority of these users are not even aware that this is happening, and have no idea that their free TV they depend for news, emergency notifications and general entertainment is under attack by the broadband industry. The users of this forum should band together and start a letter writing campaign, and use their voting influence to vote out any politician who supports the destruction of broadcast TV in favor of a for profit industry who gives back very little for their use of the American public's radio spectrum.
We should demand that adequate broadcast spectrum be set aside for use by the TV broadcast industry to ensure its survival for those who cannot afford broadband access. Taking this resource away from this group of the American public for the profits of an industry who uses a publicly owned resource for profit should be prevented in any way possible. They use the publicly owned radio spectrum for huge profits, and then give back very little to the American Public in return, whereas TV broadcasters have always given back to the public for their use of the public's radio spectrum.
I propose that the forum support some type of form letter that could be downloaded, printed and filled out by each member, and then sent to his or her Congressional representatives in protest to the wholesale giving away of a publicly owned resource for profit.
Technology advances always have unexpected consequences that are unforeseen, but this is fairly obvious, and instances of the inadequacies and lack of reliability have been seen in previous natural disasters of the recent past. Hurricane Katrina is the most recent catastrophe that showed just how vulnerable the Cellular Phone system is to failure during natural disasters, and just how little the industry re-invests in reliability.
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