London mobile usage surges, but networks hold firm
Last Update: 1:37 PM ET July 7, 2005
By Nic Fildes
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- London's mobile networks suffered disruption Thursday following a series of explosions in the city, but overall, networks held up well despite a surge in use.
Vodafone Group PLC (VOD), France Telecom's (FTE) Orange, O2 PLC (OOM.LN), Deutsche Telekom AG's (DT) T-Mobile International AG (TMO.YY) and Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.'s (0013.HK) 3 all reported a sharp jump in call volumes as people scrambled to contact friends and relations.
A spokesman for Orange said the company carried twice the amount of calls than it would on an average Thursday morning, with the peak at 1000 GMT.
The higher traffic volumes and network operators' need to allocate capacity to emergency services pushed Vodafone's network to full capacity in London, a company spokesman said. Networks outside of London weren't affected, he noted.
"There was always going to be a spike as news broke, but it isn't possible to build capacity in anticipation of such a surge," the Vodafone spokesman said. There was a lot of congestion across the board, he noted.
While some callers temporarily couldn't get through, there was no actual damage to the mobile networks from the explosions.
"I'm surprised (the network) held up so well," said a person at one of the operators who declined to be named.
Spokesmen for 02 and Vodafone said the companies took steps to increase capacity and relieve congestion.
This involves changing codes, meaning the bandwidth needed to process a call is halved. While this impairs quality - with signals fading in and out and reverberations on the line - the call still connects.
O2 said emergency services have the priority around the Aldgate area of London, one of the blast sites.
Some police officers said the temporary overload hampered communications with services not using the emergency services network.
The U.K. police force has a new communications network built by O2 and based on the Tetra standard. However, it hasn't been activated yet. The fire and ambulance services haven't awarded contracts for new networks but are expected to announce the winner of the tender in the coming months.
These systems in the future will ensure better telecoms for emergency services, reducing congestion on the public networks. Such congestion will also ease as operators shift users onto the higher-capacity third-generation networks.
The operators rejected reports that there had been requests from the U.K. government to restrict use of the network. Bomb attacks on Spanish trains in 2004 were carried out using mobile phones as detonators.
A spokesman for BT Group PLC (BT), the U.K.'s largest fixed-line operator, said the company experienced above-average congestion, though there were no problems with the network.
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