Email Enquiry - Cell Phone Communications
Initial Email Enquiry – In the recent edition of Government Computing there is a short article about communication and IT issues experienced during the 7th July London bombings. In the article an interesting point is raised that I didn't appreciate. At around 11:40 City of London Police requested for the O2 network to be shutdown (I assume using ACCOLC). The reason was the that Police Airwave system makes use of the O2 network and they required the additional capacity to ensure adequate communication on the Police radio system. This was done and as a result O2 mobile phone customers experienced a loss or degradation of service for this period. It is probably worth considering that if you intend using your mobile phone as part of your organisations response strategy and are with O2 or a provider that uses the O2 network and don't have an ACCOLC enabled sim card that you may want to consider switching to another network provider. This won't guarantee that you will have mobile phone access in the event of a major incident but may manage some of the risk. I happened to be in London during the second bombing and from experience during that day in trying to communicate, it was far more effective using SMS rather than to keep on trying to establish a voice call on a congested network.
Author’s identities are concealed for privacy and security reasons. Further information on the information contained in this topic can be directed to the JOIFF secretariaty.
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