Been in Korea to Long #4
I was reading Thomas Friedman’s latest article in the New York Times and I was amazed to find out that the US hasn’t implemented cell phone technology to talk on a subway yet:
I’ve been thinking of running for high office on a one-issue platform: I promise, if elected, that within four years America will have cellphone service as good as Ghana’s. If re-elected, I promise that in eight years America will have cellphone service as good as Japan’s, provided Japan agrees not to forge ahead on wireless technology. My campaign bumper sticker: “Can You Hear Me Now?”
I began thinking about this after watching the Japanese use cellphones and laptops to get on the Internet from speeding bullet trains and subways deep underground. But the last straw was when I couldn’t get cellphone service while visiting I.B.M.’s headquarters in Armonk, N.Y.
(…)
A new generation of politicians is waking up to this issue. For instance, Andrew Rasiej is running in New York City’s Democratic primary for public advocate on a platform calling for wireless (Wi-Fi) and cellphone Internet access from every home, business and school in the city. If, God forbid, a London-like attack happens in a New York subway, don’t trying calling 911. Your phone won’t work down there. No wireless infrastructure. This ain’t Tokyo, pal.
At the City Hall subway stop this morning, Mr. Rasiej plans to show how one makes a 911 call from the subway. He will have one aide with a tin can in the subway send a message to another aide holding a tin can connected by a string. Then the message will be passed by tin can and string up to Mr. Rasiej on the street, who will call 911 with his cellphone.
“That is how you say something if you see something today in a New York subway – tin cans connected to someone with a cellphone on the street,” said Mr. Rasiej, a 47-year-old entrepreneur who founded an educational-technology nonprofit.
I like Friedman and tend to agree with a lot of what he says especially this article here. With all the time I have spent overseas the last five years I have never realized how backward the US is in regards to cell phone technology. How is it that we just put a space shuttle into space but a cell phone doesn’t work in a New York city subway?
I've never ridden the NYC subway, nor am I a "big business" type of guy, but really– just how important is it (in the grand scheme of things) that we be able to routinely make a cell phone call from places like this anyway?
As far as disaster prep goes, just recently I have read that there are cell phone repeaters in places like the Holland tunnel (NYC area). The NYC authorities shut them down after the London subway bombings, for fear that they could be used to trigger bombs (turned out this wasn't the case for the London bombs, but of course the Madrid train bombers used cell phone triggers, as do many of the Iraqi IED bomb makers).
A common tactic of bombers is to set off one bomb, then use another bomb to take out the resultant crowd that gathers and/or the emergency personnel summoned to the scene. Command detonation using cell phones for the second bomb would greatly enhance its effectiveness.
What does the NYC subway have now for emergency comm? Dunno, but surely there must be land line emergency govt phones at regular intervals in the tunnels (?) Like you used to see sometimes along bridges or even along isolated desert roads.
I think the NYC subway is sufficiently wide to where someone can leave the train and get to a land line phone along the walls to summon help (unlike that one particular part of the London subway where they couldn't get to the destroyed car right after 7/7 (mid 1800's era construction, the "tube" was so narrow that there was only inches clearance between the car and the walls).
Someone correct me if I'm wrong about this, of course. But IMO Friedman tends to rather easily get a case of the "vapors" over a variety of subjects.