FCC Investigating Communications Congestion During Quake

From this article.
FCC Investigating Communications Congestion During Quake - 2011-08-24 20:15:32 | Broadcasting & Cable

CTIA, public safety officers both said its an argument for more spectrum for commercial wireless
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has directed the FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau to get together with wireless carriers and public safety call centers to "determine the cause of reported outages" following Tuesday's earthquake.

Both the cell phone lobby, CTIA, and public safety officers have said that the post-quake congestion is an argument for more spectrum for commercial wireless and a public safety network, though CTIA: The Wireless Association said Tuesday the issue was congestion and not "outages" per se.

I would argue that since TV and land-line kept working, for the most part, that stealing spectrum from broadcasters is not the answer.

It was congestion that caused most of the problems, and that is caused by under-built systems. Carriers do not build their systems to handle everyone calling at the same time. You just can't fix that with more spectrum.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In response to widespread congestion of cellphone networks following the 5.8 earthquake affecting the eastern United States, NAB Executive Vice President of Communications Dennis Wharton issued the following statement:

"Policymakers debating spectrum policy ought to take note that the one reliable communications service during today's earthquake was the original wireless technology -- free and local broadcasting. It's easy to get dazzled by iPads and Smartphones, but all the spectrum in the world won’t ensure reliability of the 'one-to-one' cellphone network architecture during an emergency. When there's a crisis, it's hard to replicate the reliability of the 'one-to-everyone' local radio and TV broadcast signal."

NAB News Release: NAB Statement on Wireless Network Outages Following 5.8 Earthquake on East Coast

And this wasn't even a major earthquake. Think about what would happen if it had been SF or LA.