It’s called cell tower gridlock and it can occur during an emergency when 911 calls outstrip available connections or in some metropolitan areas when too many regular calls overwhelm available tower connections.
“I’ve had it happen to me in Austin,” said Lisa Dillon, 911 regional coordinator for Central Texas Council of Governments.
In most cases the phenomenon may be overcome by simply hanging up the phone and redialing. But in an age when instant communication is the norm, sometimes people get a little excited when their call doesn’t get through.
Such was the case in Bell County recently when a driver tried to call 911 after witnessing a car accident. The woman got a busy signal and sent an e-mail complaint to county officials about her experience.
“In that particular instance, even though some people got busy signals, we did field nine phone calls,” said Dalton Cross, director of the Bell County Communications Center.
County officials reported fielding a call about the accident within seconds and were on the scene within three minutes, Cross said.
The communications center has 17 phone lines dedicated to receiving 911 calls. Callers reporting an emergency get a busy signal if all dedicated lines are in use.
“We can set up the system to either send a busy signal to ring and ring or send a recording,” Mrs. Dillon said. “If you get a busy signal, at least you know they’re busy. That’s easier to understand than if we just let it ring and ring.”
Telephone gridlock is not a new phenomenon with cell phones.
Cross said that before the county consolidated its emergency communications into the 911 center in 1999, small cities typically only had one dedicated emergency line and larger cities only a few lines.
“It happens with landline phones, too,” Mrs. Dillon said. “We try to make it where 911 is covered in all aspects. It’s not a bed of roses but we make it work the best we can.”
