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Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

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Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#371

Post by giantg2 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #325
dktalks wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use Google Maps, it will automatically prompt you to download a map of the area if there is known poor coverage. It also has automatic (?) local maps.

One beef of mine with Google’s offline maps is that they’re only driving maps, and not walking/transit/cycling maps. Obviously you can kinda figure out walking paths anyway, but since I’m sometimes travelling without roaming access, it’s unfortunate.

I image it would be hard do transit maps if you weren't connected to get the schedule.

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#372

Post by dheera »

jader201 wrote: post #276

Something I'm not seeing discussion on: What is/were the cascading effects of this, particularly for drivers? Many people in buildings were unaffected, as they could fallback to wifi. But I imagine this had a pretty broad impact to drivers. Just a few things I can think of: - Packages delayed (UPS, FedEx, Amazon, truck drivers, etc.) for drivers that relied on their phone's mapping apps to get them to their deliverie…

> What is/were the cascading effects of this, particularly for drivers?

I wish for an economic system in which all causes could be backpropagated to the source and the source be held responsible.

If for example I lost 2 hours of my time today because I had to fight with Comcast, Comcast should be charged for 2 hours worth of my hourly salary.

If I lost a job offer because of bad interview performance because of heating issues because of bad maintainence on part of landlord, landlord should be charged for the difference in time until I get my next job offer or the difference in salary until the next job offer.

If I had to fight health insurance for 5 hours on the phone due to incorrect bill and that caused me additional stress that caused my condition to worsen, health insurance should be held liable for the delta effects of that stress.

In this case the cellular operators in question would be held liable for the lost incomes of those drivers plus the lost incomes of passengers who lost money because they couldn't get to their destinations on time or missed flights and had to rebook them.

I know this level of backpropagation is hard to implement in the real world but it would be awesome if the entire world were one big PyTorch model and liabilities could be calculated by evaluating gradients.

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#373

Post by wolverine876 »

chevman wrote: post #270

Outage Over Status: Restored AT&T FINAL, Service Degradation, Global Smart Messaging Suite AT&T Global Smart Messaging Suite Event description: FINAL, Service Degradation Impacted Services: MMS MT Start time: 02-21-2024 22:00 Eastern, 21:00 Central, 19:00 Pacific End time: 02-22-2024 11:00 Eastern, 10:00 Central, 08:00 Pacific Downtime: 780 minutes Dear Customer, We are writing to inform you that Global Smart Messagi…

Doe that include cellular voice calls?

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#374

Post by Scoundreller »

giantg2 wrote: post #371
Scoundreller wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One beef of mine with Google’s offline maps is that they’re only driving maps, and not walking/transit/cycling maps. Obviously you can kinda figure out walking paths anyway, but since I’m sometimes travelling without roaming access, it’s unfortunate.

I image it would be hard do transit maps if you weren't connected to get the schedule.

They already get them somehow while "online". Offline with beginning & end times and a rough idea of frequency should be good enough for local use.

Offline road maps are subject to construction/seasonal/holiday route closures/deviations too, and so is transit.

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#375

Post by bostonwalker »

Scoundreller wrote: post #323
jader201 wrote: post #276

Something I'm not seeing discussion on: What is/were the cascading effects of this, particularly for drivers? Many people in buildings were unaffected, as they could fallback to wifi. But I imagine this had a pretty broad impact to drivers. Just a few things I can think of: - Packages delayed (UPS, FedEx, Amazon, truck drivers, etc.) for drivers that relied on their phone's mapping apps to get them to their deliverie…

> Traffic worsened because drivers weren't able to optimize their routes, or even get directions to their destination During Canada’s Rogers outage in 2022: > In Toronto there was some dependency on Rogers. One quarter of all traffic signals relied on their cellular network for signal timing changes. The Rogers GSM network was also used to remotely monitor fire alarms and sprinklers in municipal buildings. Public par…

This is putting it mildly. The Interac network went down and no one could use their debit cards nationwide.

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#376

Post by treflop »

Scoundreller wrote: post #291
standardUser wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that GPS does not rely on cell service.

The routing does though. I have Google offline maps downloaded for areas I end up in just in this case. Gotta do traffic rerouting the old fashioned way though. Or have an old-school GPS map thingy in your glovebox. (Also have kiwix and a whole archive of Wikipedia on my phone). I wonder if meshtastic communicators sales took off during this. How’s LoRa traffic these days?

I am consistently in areas with zero cellular service and I’m reasonably sure Google Maps will route offline. At least, I’ve never switched to another mapping app because I couldn’t route — it’s more usually because Google Maps is more primitive areas is kind of detail-less.

But even if it doesn’t, there are a ton of offline map apps that use OpenStreetMap data.

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#377

Post by dgacmu »

sandworm101 wrote: post #358
taurath wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only takes a few people missing an exit and swerving to create a bunch of traffic. So many people are used to not navigating manually anymore I can’t imagine it doesn’t have a big effect.

I have a 20-mile commute. I used my phone on day one at the new job, then never again since. It just isn't worth the effort for a road I've driven literally hundreds of times before. Do people also use google maps to get them from their front door to their garage? From the grocery store to wherever they parked their cars?

I do. Mostly from curiosity about which way Google will suggest I go; sometimes because the traffic or road-closure awareness is useful. Though it's often the case that I know about the road closures before it does -- but sometimes it surprises me in a pleasant way.

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#378

Post by Scoundreller »

bostonwalker wrote: post #375
Scoundreller wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Traffic worsened because drivers weren't able to optimize their routes, or even get directions to their destination During Canada’s Rogers outage in 2022: > In Toronto there was some dependency on Rogers. One quarter of all traffic signals relied on their cellular network for signal timing changes. The Rogers GSM network was also used to remotely monitor fire alarms and sprinklers in municipal buildings. Public par…

This is putting it mildly. The Interac network went down and no one could use their debit cards nationwide.

I'd put that on Interac single-homing itself without redundancy.

Their ops are critical enough you'd expect better from them.

Not the kind of shortcut Canadian banking takes for core stuff.

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#379

Post by giantg2 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #374
giantg2 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I image it would be hard do transit maps if you weren't connected to get the schedule.

They already get them somehow while "online". Offline with beginning & end times and a rough idea of frequency should be good enough for local use. Offline road maps are subject to construction/seasonal/holiday route closures/deviations too, and so is transit.

Road closure tends to be much more rare. Transit is much more variable in the US.

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#380

Post by Scoundreller »

jader201 wrote: post #366
patmorgan23 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure maps caches the data around you if you've used it somewhat recently. It saves Google bandwidth too.

I’m not so sure. Anecdotally, I’ve made it to a remote destination using Maps, then hopped back in the car an hour later (with no signal), and it couldn’t load anything. This seems to happen quite often.

Maps used to expire after 30 days (no idea why), and the auto-updating while on wifi wasn't great unless you were in the app forcing it update. Nowadays they last 365d.
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