Jan 4, 2008 7:37 am US/Eastern
Happy New Year, Your Text Message Has Failed
Network Overload Causes Many Messages To Bounce Back
NEW YORK (AP) ―
A lot of people who sent out Happy New Year's messages had them bounce back or never get through. An expert with the wireless industry says the system couldn't handle the millions of messages being sent at once.
Joe Farren of the C-T-I-A—The Wireless Association says it's like any traffic artery during rush hour—a large number of people trying to get through at the same time. Millions of messages did get through without problems on New Year's Eve—But millions of others did not.
That raises questions about communicating with family and friends during a national emergency or natural disaster.
Professor Scott Midkiff - who teaches computer engineering at Virginia Tech - says this has been a problem with the voice cellular system and the network will only get more crowded with text messaging.
Verizon says it's adding capacity to their systems.
Farren says 2007 could be the first year Americans spent more on their cell phones than they did on land lines and pay phones. And people are using their cell phones in different ways—text messages, video messages, email.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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