network busy

What exactly does it mean when you get a network busy on your cellphone.
Does that mean the cell site is ay capacity ?
Or is it something different

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cr wrote:
> What exactly does it mean when you get a network busy on your cellphone.
> Does that mean the cell site is ay capacity ?
> Or is it something different


It could mean that either:

1. All voice channels (for a phone call) are in use or there is no
capacity available to support data (for a Vision session).

or

2. There IS capacity, but you are in an area where the phone is
receiving a signal yet there is enough attenuation to your handset's
signal that the network cannot "hear" you make a call or initiate a
Vision connection. Because the phone transmits a requests and gets no
response, it mistakenly assumes that the network is busy when in fact,
the network simply didn't receive the request.



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Would everybody calling New Years Eve have any effect on someone in upstate
NY calling out?


"Isaiah Beard" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> cr wrote:
>> What exactly does it mean when you get a network busy on your cellphone.
>> Does that mean the cell site is ay capacity ?
>> Or is it something different
>
>
> It could mean that either:
>
> 1. All voice channels (for a phone call) are in use or there is no
> capacity available to support data (for a Vision session).
>
> or
>
> 2. There IS capacity, but you are in an area where the phone is receiving
> a signal yet there is enough attenuation to your handset's signal that the
> network cannot "hear" you make a call or initiate a Vision connection.
> Because the phone transmits a requests and gets no response, it mistakenly
> assumes that the network is busy when in fact, the network simply didn't
> receive the request.
>
>
>
> --
> E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
> Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.
>

"cr" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:H5jCd.29226$Ff3.24748@trndny04...
> Would everybody calling New Years Eve have any effect on someone in
> upstate NY calling out?
>


Absolutely. It's also the reason we were super-crazy-busy that night,
because everyone and their brother not only called to find out why they
couldn't make calls immediately at midnight, but they then argued with us
when we told them the reason is because *everyone* is trying to make calls
at the same time. The same thing happened the night of the American Idol
finals.

Leisa

How would that effect someone who is perhaps 250 miles away from the cell
towers in Manhattan.
I live less than 1 mile away from the Sprint tower near my home



"Leisa" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:vSkCd.274899$5K2.270243@attbi_s03...
>
> "cr" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:H5jCd.29226$Ff3.24748@trndny04...
>> Would everybody calling New Years Eve have any effect on someone in
>> upstate NY calling out?
>>
>
>
> Absolutely. It's also the reason we were super-crazy-busy that night,
> because everyone and their brother not only called to find out why they
> couldn't make calls immediately at midnight, but they then argued with us
> when we told them the reason is because *everyone* is trying to make calls
> at the same time. The same thing happened the night of the American Idol
> finals.
>
> Leisa
>

On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 23:16:12 +0000, cr wrote:

> How would that effect someone who is perhaps 250 miles away from the cell
> towers in Manhattan.
> I live less than 1 mile away from the Sprint tower near my home
>
>
>
> "Leisa" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:vSkCd.274899$5K2.270243@attbi_s03...

Real simple. Each time you goto dial a number the tower has to use some
overhead to open the voice channels and of course setup the call over
sprint's network. Now during normal operation when users make phone calls
the tower may handle only a handful of startup/teardown call setups within
a few secs. Which is fine since given the number of people in a given cell
area the chances of everyone hitting send on their phones at the same time
would require well some kind of special "TIMED" event. Wouldn't you know
it at 12midnight new years everyone had to call someone so at exactly
12:00-12:02 everyone just had to call, AT THE SAME TIME, someone. This of
course raised the normal handful of call setups per a tower to several
100s if not an attempt of 1,000s given that towers can cover several sq
miles. It effects you because chances are if some tower 250 miles away was
overloaded because the call volumes jumped at an alarming rate due to a
national timed event most likely every person within your tower's range
caused the same jump as well. Lets not forget that everyone who can't get
through are franticly hitting re-dial. I live out of the way in South
Florida and at 12:02am not only was sprintpcs' network overloaded but so
was digital roaming providers and analog roaming systems in my area.

cr wrote:
> How would that effect someone who is perhaps 250 miles away from the cell
> towers in Manhattan.

Actually, yes, very much so.

For starters, not everyone is in Manhattan. People like to wish each
other a Happy New Year in the rest of the country, too.

Second, Manhattan might still be a contributing factor, depending on
where your PCS phone number is based. I live 60 miles away from
Manhattan. And although I have a number that's local to my area but NOT
Manhattan, the mobile telephone switch center that administers my phone
number is located only a mile or two outside of the New York City area.
It handles quite a few of the exchanges in Manhattan, and in the areas
south to it.

This is pretty typical of all cellular networks, not just Sprint. You
can't just house a Lucent 5ESS or Nortel DMS-10 at every single cell
site on your network. The expense would be enormous, and the traffic
that flows through the network 99.999% of of the time would not be
enough to justify the cost of all that excess capacity, even if you
really want to build it all in for the one or two busy hours of the year
that such capacity might be fully utilized.

So instead, regions covering several cell sites (or sometimes several
dozen) are handled using one or two switching centers within that
region. Usually this is enough to handle the traffic running through
the network most of the time, the sacrifice being that on some occasions
(like the hour coming up to and following 12:00 am on January 1) calls
might be blocked due to a lack of switching capacity.

This also used to be the case on the wireline network, particularly on
Mother's Day, the busiest day of the year for the public telephone
network. "All circuits busy" messages were common on that day prior to
the 1990s, when cell phones became prominent, better and more
intelligent switching methods were devised, competition increased, and
the use of wireline phones began to decline (and continues to decline
today).


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So basically you're telling me If the central switch which in my case is in
NewHampshire is overloaded I can't make calls here in Upstate NY
I live in a sparsely developed area so I doubt the tower is maxed out with
callers



"Isaiah Beard" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> cr wrote:
>> How would that effect someone who is perhaps 250 miles away from the cell
>> towers in Manhattan.
>
> Actually, yes, very much so.
>
> For starters, not everyone is in Manhattan. People like to wish each
> other a Happy New Year in the rest of the country, too.
>
> Second, Manhattan might still be a contributing factor, depending on where
> your PCS phone number is based. I live 60 miles away from Manhattan. And
> although I have a number that's local to my area but NOT Manhattan, the
> mobile telephone switch center that administers my phone number is located
> only a mile or two outside of the New York City area. It handles quite a
> few of the exchanges in Manhattan, and in the areas south to it.
>
> This is pretty typical of all cellular networks, not just Sprint. You
> can't just house a Lucent 5ESS or Nortel DMS-10 at every single cell site
> on your network. The expense would be enormous, and the traffic that
> flows through the network 99.999% of of the time would not be enough to
> justify the cost of all that excess capacity, even if you really want to
> build it all in for the one or two busy hours of the year that such
> capacity might be fully utilized.
>
> So instead, regions covering several cell sites (or sometimes several
> dozen) are handled using one or two switching centers within that region.
> Usually this is enough to handle the traffic running through the network
> most of the time, the sacrifice being that on some occasions (like the
> hour coming up to and following 12:00 am on January 1) calls might be
> blocked due to a lack of switching capacity.
>
> This also used to be the case on the wireline network, particularly on
> Mother's Day, the busiest day of the year for the public telephone
> network. "All circuits busy" messages were common on that day prior to
> the 1990s, when cell phones became prominent, better and more intelligent
> switching methods were devised, competition increased, and the use of
> wireline phones began to decline (and continues to decline today).
>
>
> --
> E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
> Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.

cr wrote:
> So basically you're telling me If the central switch which in my case is in
> NewHampshire is overloaded I can't make calls here in Upstate NY

No, I'm not saying that. Outbound calls that you make do not have to be
routed from your "home" switch. The switch that covers the cell sector
you're in will handle that. As long as the local switch has capacity
and its interconnect to the PSTN (if a non PCS-to-PCS call) is not
compromised, the call will complete.

I AM saying, however, that incoming calls WILL be affected if your home
switch is overloaded or out service. This is because other cell
providers and LECs don't know where your cell phone might be, and calls
to your number will get routed by those LECs to your home switch, which
must then locate you and route the call accordingly.

I experienced this first hand during Hurricane Floyd, when it reached
New Jersey. The home switching center for my Sprint PCS number at the
time was in Bound Brook, NJ, which was flooded by the storm. The Sprint
switch, along with all of the Verizon landline and cellular switches it
was co-located with, ended up submerged in flood waters.

I happened to live right next door to Bound Brook, and the result is
that in the Bound Brook area, I had NO signal from Sprint at all, as the
cell site went dark having no switch to manage it. Roaming on Verizon
was equally fruitless, and the best I could do was get a scratchy analog
signal from what was then Comcast CellularOne (now Cingular) at the
special hurricane price of $1.99 a minute, with direct billing by credit
card only. If I traveled into an an adjacent area, I had a strong
Sprint signal again and could make outgoing calls. Anyone who called me
however, received an "all circuits busy" message, even if I was in a
working coverage area. Not even voice mail worked.

It took several days for the switching facility to be drained, cables
dried and equipment to be replaced. Ultimately, Verizon stayed (they
kind of have to) but Sprint PCS permanently rerouted all of Bound
Brook's switching functions to a switch in Teterboro, NJ instead.





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Thanks for the explanation.:}


"Isaiah Beard" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> cr wrote:
>> So basically you're telling me If the central switch which in my case is
>> in NewHampshire is overloaded I can't make calls here in Upstate NY
>
> No, I'm not saying that. Outbound calls that you make do not have to be
> routed from your "home" switch. The switch that covers the cell sector
> you're in will handle that. As long as the local switch has capacity and
> its interconnect to the PSTN (if a non PCS-to-PCS call) is not
> compromised, the call will complete.
>
> I AM saying, however, that incoming calls WILL be affected if your home
> switch is overloaded or out service. This is because other cell providers
> and LECs don't know where your cell phone might be, and calls to your
> number will get routed by those LECs to your home switch, which must then
> locate you and route the call accordingly.
>
> I experienced this first hand during Hurricane Floyd, when it reached New
> Jersey. The home switching center for my Sprint PCS number at the time
> was in Bound Brook, NJ, which was flooded by the storm. The Sprint
> switch, along with all of the Verizon landline and cellular switches it
> was co-located with, ended up submerged in flood waters.
>
> I happened to live right next door to Bound Brook, and the result is that
> in the Bound Brook area, I had NO signal from Sprint at all, as the cell
> site went dark having no switch to manage it. Roaming on Verizon was
> equally fruitless, and the best I could do was get a scratchy analog
> signal from what was then Comcast CellularOne (now Cingular) at the
> special hurricane price of $1.99 a minute, with direct billing by credit
> card only. If I traveled into an an adjacent area, I had a strong Sprint
> signal again and could make outgoing calls. Anyone who called me however,
> received an "all circuits busy" message, even if I was in a working
> coverage area. Not even voice mail worked.
>
> It took several days for the switching facility to be drained, cables
> dried and equipment to be replaced. Ultimately, Verizon stayed (they kind
> of have to) but Sprint PCS permanently rerouted all of Bound Brook's
> switching functions to a switch in Teterboro, NJ instead.
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
> Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.