The Internet, Cell Phones and London

9/11 was one of the first worldwide news stories that occurred within the context of the Internet and Cell Phones. After the news broke that the World Trade Centers had been hit, people flocked to online news sites. However, the sites were largely unavailable. This caused an almost paradoxical drop in overall Internet traffic as people turned to reliable broadcast mediums -- radio and TV -- for their news. (ref).

Once people figured out exactly what happened, they wanted to ensure that their friends and family were safe. To do this, they turned to cell phones. Unfortunately, much of the cell phone infrastructure was demolished when the towers actually fell. This led to frustation and confusion about the safety of friends and loved ones.

Today, more than that awful day in September 2001, people use the Internet and cell phones as a means to get the news and communicate during catastrophic events.

Unfortunately, the recent terror events in London have given us an opportunity to assess how the infrastructure that powers the Internet and cell phones has grown and matured since 9/11.

Starting with the Internet, this press release from the BBC offers some interesting insights:

The BBC News website recorded the highest volume of traffic in the site's history on the day of the attacks, with an estimated figure of 115.7 million page impressions.

The BBC News website figure is more than double the previous highest figure of 50.6m page impressions, recorded on the day of the UK election results in May this year.

At peak, the BBC News site was receiving 40,000 page requests per second.

These are incredible figures. What impact did all this have on the actual infrastructure itself? I posed that question to the PR department at the Linx Internet Service Provider.

Linx is the world's largest Internet exchange point and handles 90 percent of all U.K. Internet traffic.

Malcom Hutty, the Regulation Officer at LINX, responded:

The awful events of 7/7 in London did not have an operational impact on the functioning of the exchange at LINX.

Later, he says this:

Aggregate traffic was not noticably affected by these incidents.

The dip in overall traffic during 9/11 does not appear to have occurred during 7/7. Does this mean that people were satisfied with the reliability of the web and didn't feel the need to turn to TV and radio? That's certainly one possibility. The other, of course, is that people worldwide were not as interested in 7/7 as they were 9/11.

Mr. Hutty offered his opinion about why Internet traffic remained steady during the day of 7/7:

... the 9/11 attacks caused considerable destruction of core communications industry infrastructure: this was not the case in London.

Interesting.

As for the usage of cell phones on 7/11, nothing was "as usual". All three of the major cell phone providers in Great Britain reported approximately twice as much usage as normal.

I confirmed these figures with the media department of Orange. Orange is the mobile phone division of France Telecom. Stuart Jackson, the head of UK media operations for Orange, responded to my request for confirmation with this information:

Due to the number of high calls made on the Orange network on Thursday July 7, some customers in London experienced difficulty making calls on their first attempt and may have had to try several times before they got connected. Twice as many calls were being made on the Orange network than normally expected on a Thursday morning. The peak calling period was between 10.30 and 11am. We increased traffic capacity on our network in the London area to cope with the demand and calling rates began returning to normal levels after midday. The Orange network, although busy, remained intact and fully operational. Orange contacted the authorities on Thursday morning offering its assistance and we are now helping the appropriate agencies with their investigations wherever required to do so.

Orange - along with the other mobile network operators - has the power to invoke an Access Overload Control (ACCOLC) system on the network. This enables us to give priority calling to groups of pre-defined customers over other customers. The government can request Orange to invoke ACCOLC or we can invoke it of our own accord to protect the network. This was NOT requested of Orange on Thursday 7th July.

Jackson said that the emergency services are an example of a group that would benefit from ACCOLC. Members of the "elite" group are identified based upon the code contained in the phone's SIM card. For those of you with Cingular or T-mobile in America, you will be familiar with the SIM card. Calls from those who are not members of the pre-defined special group are immediately rejected.

It is interesting to note that this system was not invoked during 7/7. This seems to imply that the British authorities were not worried that people would use cellular phones to detonate the further attacks and that there was enough network capacity to allow civilian usage without interfering with emergency communications among first responders.

Overall it seems that 7/7 had much less of an impact on our communications infrastructure than 9/11. It is easy to attribute this to the fact that much of the communications equipment in NYC was destroyed in the 9/11 attacks and almost no equipment was rendered inoperable in the recent London attacks.

I hope that by studying how the infrastructure responds during terrible events like this, we can ensure that reliable information and efficient communication are available to emergency personnel and the family/friends of victims in the future.