US mobile phones failed in 'hour of need'

US mobile phone services once are coming in for criticism in the wake of their failure to keep running through the power cuts that affected much of the Eastern Seaboard late last week - the latest instance of the 'must have' gadget failing when most needed.

During Thursday's blackout most mobile phone subscribers were unable to make calls when they reached for their handsets. Only the truly persistent were able to get through after the lights went out.

The carriers blamed the ongoing outages on their transmitter stations, which handle call traffic.

A spokesman for Nextel Communications said: "We need electricity to power our cell sites, but when you don't have that, it's out of our control."

The transmitter stations are powered by electricity, and most have battery backups that provide three to six hours of additional operation. But when the blackout stretched beyond six hours, the stations that were still working went dead.

This is the second time a significant number of US mobile phone subscribers had difficulty making calls during a time of crisis. The first was after the 11 September terrorist attacks, when damage to the cell phone antennas on the World Trade Center towers and heavy traffic brought wireless dialling to a standstill.

Thursday's blackout caused a similar surge in phone calls, creating about four times the usual traffic in the area, according to Verizon Wireless.

In many ways these incidents represent the times when mobile phones should really come into their own - and yet twice now they have failed their users.

IDC analyst Keith Waryas believes the 146 million wireless subscribers in the US will continue to have problems getting calls through during emergency times, although he believes the 2003 blackout will force carriers to better arm their networks against electricity failures.

"These kinds of lessons are pointing to one thing: We expect our [mobile] phones to always be on," he said. "This is a learning curve."

Ben Charny writes for News.com