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To: JGoren who wrote (4907)	1/7/2000 10:40:00 PM
From: Ruffian	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13582

GSM Caving?> U.K. Networks On New Year's: Too Loaded By Paul Quigley LONDON—Cecil B. DeMille might have been jealous. Like some epic movie on a scale the great director himself could never achieve, London erupted on New Year's Eve into an extravaganza of sound and light. The atmosphere along the River Thames was palpably electric, akin to strolling inadvertently onto a movie set in the middle of a battle scene. The air was thick with the scent of gunpowder. And the river, London's lifeline since Roman times, played host to flotilla after flotilla of vessels cruising towards Greenwich and the massive new Millennium Dome. What's wrong with this picture? While the world partied, mobile subscribers in the U.K. tried to phone loved ones at midnight, and the volume of calls brought all four nationwide networks to their knees. Apart from capacity issues, unconfirmed reports leaked out that London was in a tacit state of emergency following several bomb threats received by police. The Queen and Prime Minister Tony Blair, though aware of the potential security situation, carried on with their ceremonial duties. Meanwhile, military, government and emergency services were in a high state of alert. Speculation is rife that the four mobile networks tripped over ACCOLC, or Access Overload Control mode. An ACCOLC SIM card in VIPs', police and security services' GSM phones enables the network to identify if the user has priority over “normal” SIM cards. All base stations will always allow a priority subscriber to make a call even if it means dropping an existing call. While no official acknowledgment has been made by the operators of ACCOLC, according to Emma Terleske, corporate affairs manager at Vodafone AirTouch plc's Newbury, U.K., headquarters: “It was invoked in Glasgow [Scotland] for a very short time–not in London.” She adds that the situation was not “serious.” Vodafone's network in Scotland and Northern Ireland suffered major network failures, though the company said the outages were not related to any Millennium Bug in their network computers. There also were reports of overload on the mobile phone network in New Zealand coinciding with the millennium celebrations. In Australia, Telstra also reported mobile congestion. In terms of Y2K software glitches, all networks so far appear to be working well through the date change. “Absolutely no bugs,” Terleske says. “A contingency team is in place and was looking at what was going on in our networks in Australia and New Zealand.” In Britain, however, network congestion strangled wireless communications. BT's fixed network was the first to choke up. For several hours, calls were not getting through to mobiles despite base station signal strength meters showing a good condition on many handsets. “The congestion we expected, and we've taken measures–which are never enough,” Terleske says. “There was a fair amount of congestion around the country–Glasgow in particular.” Vodafone's “Millennium Team” has been working for a couple years already and won't be disbanded until March, according to Terleske. Orange plc has been working since 1997 to avoid Y2K-related problems, according to Sara Taylor, corporate affairs spokeswoman at Orange's London headquarters. Meanwhile back on the Thames at midnight, Greenwich Mean Time, the cast is like a roll-call of British dignitaries and celebrities of the late twentieth century: the Queen and the entire Royal Family, Prime Minister Tony Blair and his cabinet, Baroness Margaret Thatcher, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Sean Connery, Sir Richard Branson, with a supporting cast of many thousands. Police reported more than 3 million people in the streets of London where, at least, they could speak with one another– unlike their brethren who'd brought along mobile phones. At least Mr. DeMille would have been proud of the spectacle.