Do you have an emergency alternative communications plan

Severe weather, natural and man made disasters that knock out electricity can and often knock out communications networks as well.  We have all heard the warnings to have a 72 hour supply of non perishable food and fresh water on hand as well as a battery operated radio to stay informed.  In the event of a failure of traditional telecommunications systems most could be caught unprepared.  

The natural instinctive inclination for just about everyone if wireline telephone service isn't available is to pull out the cell phone and make a call.  In an emergency situation that knocks telephone service out of commission the people flooding the cellular networks making calls to check on relatives and friends would potentially overload cell towers, even entire cellular networks could get crippled.

The first thing it to limit the number and length of cellular calls.  Use cell phone calls to check in with family members affected by emergency conditions and/or communications network outages.  Secondly use text messaging as much as possible.  Text messages may get delayed a few minutes depending on congestion on the cellular networks.  

Anybody in the role of caregiver to family members who are elderly, disabled or have long term health conditions may need to consider a communications solution that works independently from the traditional telephone and cellular networks.  FRS and GMRS two way radios that use UHF frequencies that have 20 km or more of range can be purchased for well under 100 dollars.  

One of the essential needs for survival in an emergency is access to communications, having a plan to communicate with relatives and friends when telecommunications networks fail in an emergency situation could save your life that of someone you are about.

Shaw's Wireless Wait And See Game

For Canadian cell phone subscribers, the long sought competition is starting to arrive.  The launch of Wind Mobile at the end of 2009, and two more new carriers Mobilicity and Public Mobile are expected to launch in May.  While the promise made in 2008 when Industry Canada opened up new frequency bands for new cell phone carriers is starting to come true, one of the big winners in the wireless telecom spectrum auction hasn't even announced a launch.  Shaw Communications won licenses for large chunks of the new cell phone spectrum, but hasn't even announced any plans to launch a cell phone service of their own.

Playing the waiting game allows Shaw to acquire ether Wind Mobile or Mobilicity if they end up in trouble from debt mounting from paying for winning bids in the spectrum auction, building networks, and marketing to attract subscribers.  This is similar to the way that Telus expanded from their Western Canadian base to become a national carrier by buying out Clearnet back in the year 2000.  Some may think this may be an underhanded way of getting into cell phone industry.  With changes to the way Canada's telecommunications industry is regulated it will be an easier way to become a cell phone carrier.

Users of Bag Phones and bricks (and some other users) lose cell phone service

Remember back in the 198o's or the early 1990's when Cell phones were just coming out into the market they were ether a big plastic brick with an antenna or a handset connected to a bag with an antenna. The analog cellular service that made those phones possible will soon be coming to an end.

The Federal Communications Commission has authorized American Cell phone carriers to start shutting down Analog cell phone service starting in March of 2008 in order to reallocate the frequencies used for analog cellular service to Digital cell phones . While most consider the analog cellular phones as antiquated as Windows 3.1, but for many in rural areas analog is the only cellular service available because digital isn't offered or digital coverage is poor.

It's not just users of big old cell phones in the country that will be left without service, about half a million owners of GM vehicles made before 2004 who have the OnStar service will also get disconnected. GM stayed with Analog cellular because it's more carrier agnostic than digital cellular systems. Another half a million household alarm systems will also be affected. These systems have a cellular telephone back up system for when the landline telephone system has failed.

I don't believe the progression of technology is a bad thing, it's government policies such as this that are a bad thing. Bueaucrats who have very little grasp of technological process are the problem, not the technology.