How Did Yesterday’s Large AT&T Service Outage Influence First Responders – and What Can We Be taught?
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 packages? DRONELIFE neither accepts nor makes fee for visitor posts. All photos courtesy Skyfire.
By Matt Sloane
Whereas tens of hundreds of American AT&T prospects complained about not with the ability to order their Starbucks forward of time, or dropping their every 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’ means to fly and reply to calls?
911 facilities throughout the nation reported additional excessive name quantity, principally on account of individuals calling in to “ensure 911 labored,” however largely, public security companies utilizing AT&T companies have been working on “FirstNet” circuits, reasonably 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 could have been the largest check but for FirstNet, which additionally occurs to be run by AT&T; and in accordance with the anecdotes I obtained from a lot of our shoppers and pals, it labored simply effective!
That’s the excellent news.
The unhealthy information is that any civilian among the many 70,000+ AT&T subscribers affected by yesterday’s outage would have had no strategy 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 companies reported that whereas their civilian AT&T cell telephones have been having issues, their FirstNet units – each telephones and hotspots utilized in drone response – appeared to be working usually.
Much more useful have been the recommendations I obtained again from a number of of those people about tips on how to forestall 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-Cell, 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.
General, phrase on the road appears to be that the system labored as designed, and the outages have been merely an inconvenience for many individuals; but it surely proved to be an excellent train for our nation’s public security companies to see in a real-world state of affairs how their coaching and preparation stands up beneath antagonistic circumstances.
Matt Sloane is the CEO and founding father of Skyfire Consulting and its dad or mum firm, Atlanta Drone Group. Earlier than he based Atlanta Drone Group in 2014, Matt spent 14 years in numerous roles at CNN in Atlanta, Matt has additionally labored as an authorized Emergency Medical Technician for Emory EMS, working his manner 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 companies market, and a fascinated observer of the rising drone business and the regulatory atmosphere for drones. Miriam has penned over 3,000 articles targeted on the industrial 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 for brand new applied sciences.
For drone business consulting or writing, E mail Miriam.
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