How Did Yesterday’s Huge AT&T Service Outage Influence First Responders – and What Can We Study?
DRONELIFE is happy to current this visitor put up by Matt Sloane, the Founder and CEO of Skyfire Consulting. On this piece, Matt talks concerning the outcomes of his casual survey of first responders: did yesterday’s large AT&T outage affect their applications? DRONELIFE neither accepts nor makes fee for visitor posts. All photos courtesy Skyfire.
By Matt Sloane
Whereas tens of hundreds of American AT&T clients complained about not having the ability to order their Starbucks forward of time, or shedding their each day login streak on Sweet Crush, there was a much more regarding challenge yesterday in my thoughts — what does the lack of cell service do to our public security drone operators’ skill to fly and reply to calls?
911 facilities throughout the nation reported additional excessive name quantity, largely resulting from folks calling in to “be sure 911 labored,” however largely, public security businesses utilizing AT&T providers had been working on “FirstNet” circuits, slightly than the general public AT&T circuits.
FirstNet is a separate mobile community constructed particularly for public security and emergency response suppliers; in order that in a case the place public cell circuits are overloaded or down, first responders can nonetheless talk.
Yesterday might have been the largest check but for FirstNet, which additionally occurs to be run by AT&T; and in line with the anecdotes I obtained from lots of our shoppers and associates, it labored simply tremendous!
That’s the excellent news.
The dangerous information is that any civilian among the many 70,000+ AT&T subscribers affected by yesterday’s outage would have had no method to name or textual content 911 in the event that they weren’t close to WiFi.
So what have an effect on did this have on the nation’s public security drone operators? Apparently not a lot.
In my unofficial survey, most businesses reported that whereas their civilian AT&T cell telephones had been having issues, their FirstNet units – each telephones and hotspots utilized in drone response – gave the impression to be working usually.
Much more useful had been the options I bought again from just a few of those people about stop an outage like this from affecting operations.
Many talked of utilizing hotspots with SIM playing cards from a number of operators – 1 AT&T, 1 Verizon, 1 T-Cellular, simply in case one of many three went down – and some have additionally invested in Starlink’s satellite tv for pc web service in case a catastrophe right here on earth took out a number of networks.
Total, phrase on the road appears to be that the system labored as designed, and the outages had been merely an inconvenience for many individuals; however it proved to be train for our nation’s public security businesses to see in a real-world situation how their coaching and preparation stands up beneath hostile circumstances.
Matt Sloane is the CEO and founding father of Skyfire Consulting and its father or mother firm, Atlanta Drone Group. Earlier than he based Atlanta Drone Group in 2014, Matt spent 14 years in varied roles at CNN in Atlanta, Matt has additionally labored as an authorized Emergency Medical Technician for Emory EMS, working his means as much as Chief of Assets and Planning for the division.
Matt is an inaugural member of the Nationwide Fireplace Safety Affiliation (NFPA) technical committee on drones, a technical advisor to the Worldwide Affiliation of Fireplace Chiefs expertise council, and an FAA-certified pilot.
Learn extra from Matt Sloane:
Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, knowledgeable drone providers market, and a fascinated observer of the rising drone business and the regulatory setting for drones. Miriam has penned over 3,000 articles centered on the business drone area and is a global speaker and acknowledged determine within the business. Miriam has a level from the College of Chicago and over 20 years of expertise in excessive tech gross sales and advertising and marketing for brand new applied sciences.
For drone business consulting or writing, Electronic mail Miriam.
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