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Sirens are common. Cell phones? You'd just overload the network.
by JoachimSchipper 16y ago
Sirens are common. Cell phones? You'd just overload the network.
- nostrademons 16y agoThere's just such a system for several municipalities in the U.S - the reverse 911 system, which robo-calls your home or cell phone in the event of a natural disaster or other emergency. I just signed up for it in Mountain View CA, and my mom got a reverse-911 call for the Boston water main break this winter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_911 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_911
- JoachimSchipper 16y agoYes, but how many people signed up for that? The parent proposed contacting everyone, remember...
- wtallis 16y agoHave we all forgotten what the word broadcast means? If sending everyone the same signal at the same time is hard, you're doing it wrong.
- epochwolf 16y agoThe doesn't work very well when each device requires a separate communication channel like a cell phone.
- fryguy 16y agoThere may be a 160 byte block of space in the normal traffic your phone makes to the towers in order to let it know where you are. Maybe they should look into using that for something like this.
- wtallis 16y agoIt should be much easier for cell phones, since the underlying physical medium is a broadcast medium. It takes significant engineering effort to get rid of this capability.
- JoachimSchipper 16y agoThat would require a completely separate, unencrypted broadcast protocol. Yes, you could design that, but who will pay for it?