The telecommunications outage

which occurred yesterday should be a wake up call to all those who appear to be permanently attached to their phones - but it won't be. They will be back to old habits today.

My own mobile phone was quiet yesterday - at least I thought it was. I accidentally left it at home when I prowled off. For me the phone is there for emergencies and essential calls when I am out. 

I make very few non-essential calls anyway. Most of those are to check on people who might need help. Talking for long periods of time on the phone is not my preferred means of communicating with people here if I am likely to see them face-to-face. 

Someone queried that the other day. Why had I bothered to make the effort of pedalling off to see someone else? I could just as easily have spoken to her on the phone. No, I could not. It was important to make the effort to actually see this person. She lives alone now. I took some of the shortbread I had made. We had a mug of tea each and a chat. As I left she actually told me, "It was so nice of you to come round. It's so much nicer than just talking on the phone." 

Face-to-face is different.

Of course we use telecommunication networks for all sorts of other things as well. The outage had a massive flow on effect to businesses who need access to a network to even function. Some businesses had to cease trading. Some banks were not on line. The hospitals were struggling to function as they could not access all electronic records. 

There seems to have been a "well this is all the fault of the telco" and "they need to do better" attitude, especially from the government. It was said to show "how vulnerable" we are. The company is based in Singapore and that apparently means the government is in no way to blame. Really?

I suspect that what we really have is a system which is struggling to handle the demands made of it. We have a system where people have objected to those nasty phone towers being placed where they need to be placed. There are other parts of the system which have been built quickly and as cheaply as possible in order to try and cope with the demand. 

Do we really need all that instant availability? One of my neighbours was working from home yesterday. He was fortunate in that he could do this without the need to access that particular network. Last night he came over to ask me for a book I had promised to loan him. While we were talking he told me he had managed to achieve a lot. "It was so quiet Cat! I didn't get nearly so many calls." 

Perhaps we need to switch the phones off sometimes - or leave them behind.