If ever there is a country who knows that much about technology—leading the consumer electronics industry and leaving the rest of the world in awe and begging for more—it is the land of the rising sun, Japan. Japan’s top telecommunications companies are planning to strengthen their mobile networks against the perils and threats of the environment. We all know that Japan is highly prone to earthquakes and other natural disasters. Moreover, it’s also reported that Japan’s mobile networks during last year’s tragedy became overloaded due to the heavy wireless traffic.
This problem was apparently caused by the destruction of several BTS or base stations. Avoiding such occurrence to befall on them once again, Japan’s NTT Docomo and KDDI are working closely with the Tohoku University to find ways in diverting traffic to other networks. The ability for mobile carriers to quickly reconstruct new stations while replacing important lines with satellite links during such events have also been tested in the regions of Tohoku. Japan is planning to have the technology in place by 2015, or approximately three years after now.
Note that in most countries, including the USA, most of the networks don’t have a whole lot of spare capacity, so even without widespread destruction, it wouldn’t take that much to overload them. The main idea is that it is often not economically desirable (or viable) to have spare capacity at all times.
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