Paul Kapustka's Blog
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April 26, 2006
Disasters aren't just hurricanes -- Add your voice to the petition!
Appropriately, Katrina got a lot of attention, but sometimes disasters are small and localized -- but potentially just as disruptive and dangerous for those affected. Look what happens when a small but strategically significant landslide takes place, cutting off all communications to a community. Still think this country is ready for disaster situations? If you think more needs to be done, there is still time to add your voice to the Pulver/Evslin petition before the FCC on post-disaster communications.
Reading more about the outage in Half Moon Bay and the coastside serves as a great reminder that despite all their wishes to build super networks that will rake in big bucks, the infrastructure of the telcos' networks is in many places paper-thin. Imagine the headlines we'd see if Vonage couldn't reach 14,000 customers for more than a day, and had to rely on police officers at street corners for 911 coverage!
Since many big-bucks CEOs and other Silicon Valley execs live in the Half Moon Bay area, we expect to soon see a private microwave (or WiMAX?) network set up to avoid problems from future landslides. But how many other areas are similarly vulnerable to single points of failure? Might it make sense to require AT&T and Verizon to make such infrastructure information public, so that citizens can take action before the next mountain slides down?
Posted by paul at April 26, 2006 08:52 AM