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

cnbc.com

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

#451

Post by Tempest1981 »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #396
dfadsadsf wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just not true for modern phones. I use iPhone on hikes without cellular connection and GPS lock is instantaneous. Organic Map app is great for hiking.

You're talking about something very different called a hot start. The GP is discussing time to fix in a cold start scenario. You'd only see this on a phone that had been powered off for months, or "teleported" hundreds of miles away. In this scenario the receiver has to download the new time, new ephemeris data, and a new almanac (up to 12m30s in the worst case) before it can fix. Depending on the receiver, there may…

You reminded me of my first GPS, which connected to a laptop via RS-232:

https://www.bevhoward.com/TripMate.htm (Not me)

Back then, just getting a GPS fix at all was exciting. Then driving around with it propped on the dashboard or rear window.

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

#452

Post by organsnyder »

gnicholas wrote: post #319
organsnyder wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a standard dropped call due to a dead zone.

VZW doesn't have dead zones on 101 in the Bay Area, in my experience.

Could be issues with a single tower or something.

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

#453

Post by giancarlostoro »

panarky wrote: post #443
giancarlostoro wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really shouldn't be the only way to verify its you if its going to prompt you every single time.

Tell that to $8 trillion Schwab and $12 trillion Fidelity.

If you are their direct customer you should just keep emailing support as much as possible.

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

#454

Post by georgeplusplus »

topkai22 wrote: post #424
jrochkind1 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about how pretty much no USA infrastructure of today is as reliable as of the last half of the 20th century. Just my imagination, or true? And what does it mean?

Airliners crash far less, road fatalities kept going down till 2010, so taking the broad view of were infrastructure is I’d say at least those got better. Anecdotally, I remember more electricity interruptions and plumbing issues when I was a kid, but that could be location dependent and I couldn’t quickly find good numbers going back that far. Edit: While the phone network didn’t necessarily go down, I frequently go…

Not to come off pedantic but improvements in airplane and car design has nothing to do with infrastructure.

I think the average person views infrastructure improvements as improvements in the roads, airports, or air traffic control.

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

#455

Post by caddemon »

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…

Minor in the grand scheme of things, but I thought interesting (or at least unexpected) - a bunch of rides at Disney World went down because they rely on AT&T push to talk for communication between staff, which is required for safety reasons to run some attractions.

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

#456

Post by georgeplusplus »

onthecanposting wrote: post #438
jrochkind1 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about how pretty much no USA infrastructure of today is as reliable as of the last half of the 20th century. Just my imagination, or true? And what does it mean?

Highway construction standards are much higher than they were 30-50 years ago, but it's a mixed bag. Administrative costs are significantly higher. Survey has dramatically improved with GPS. Highway engineering has not improved since about the 90s. Automated machine guidance has significantly improved the potential accuracy of grading operations in th last decade.

>>>Highway construction standards are much higher than they were 30-50 years ago,

The roads in many US cities arent built to those standards and are grandfathered from them. New York City highways areas horrible.

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

#457

Post by rany_ »

sobriquet9 wrote: post #368
offmycloud wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPS on most cell phones uses data connection to download current satellite data in order to decrease the time from cold start to GPS lock. Lack of cell or WiFi can cause GPS to take 5-15 minutes to "search the sky" and download satellite data via low bitrate channel under poor signal conditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GNSS Edit: You can think of it as a CDN for the GPS almanac.

From cold start. Most starts are not cold. The phone knows where it is, approximately, what time it is (within a second or so, from built-in RTC), and orbital parameters of the satellites overhead (maybe without the latest corrections). My Garmin watch gets a GPS lock in way less than 5 minutes without any cellular connection.

Actually, your Garmin probably gets A-GPS data uploaded to it via the app.

I think that because Huami/Amazfit/Xiaomi smartwatches already do that. We know this from reverse engineering efforts in Gadgetbridge, but support for Garmin is still new and so there isn't as much info about it; either way it probably works in the same way.

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

#459

Post by zackkitzmiller »

danesparza wrote: post #304
panarky wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also can't login to sites that require SMS 2FA.

Well ... let's be honest: SMS 2FA shouldn't be a thing. TOTP or stronger, please.

SMS 2FA and TOTP aren't mutually exclusive are they?

TOTP -> Time-based One Time Password SMS -> Delivery mechanism.

You can deliver TOTP over SMS.

Obviously, SMS shouldn't be used, but I was under the impression that the code generation mechanism and the code generation algorithms are completely disparate concepts.

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

#460

Post by zackkitzmiller »

Scoundreller wrote: post #288
wizerdrobe wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I woke up to no signal / “SOS” mode on my iPhone this morning at around 0600 and had service restored around 0830 in South Carolina. However, a coworker in Memphis confirmed he was still out of service at 1000 so it’s regional restoration.

I always wonder instead of a regional restoration, if they would “disable” segments of SIMs/accounts randomly to avoid lightning strike (it’s not a DDoS…) their network as they turn things back on. Depends on what the recovery method is, but could be problematic to turn everything back on at once.

I've never heard lightning strike, always thundering herd.
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