Mass Call Event

A mass call event or mass calling event (also MCE in

telephony Telephony ( ) is the field of technology involving the development, application, and deployment of telecommunication services for the purpose of electronic transmission of voice, fax, or data, between distant parties. The history of telephony is i ...

usage) is a situation in which an extraordinarily high number of

telephone call A telephone call is a connection over a telephone network A telephone network is a telecommunications network that connects telephones, which allows telephone calls between two or more parties, as well as newer features such as fax and interne ...

s are attempted into or out of an area, causing tremendous

network congestion Network congestion in data networking and queueing theory is the reduced quality of service that occurs when a network node or link is carrying more data than it can handle. Typical effects include queueing delay, packet loss or the blocking of ...

, and therefore service which is either significantly degraded or potentially almost completely unavailable. The term is typically used with

mobile telephony Mobile telephony is the provision of telephone services to phones which may move around freely rather than stay fixed in one location. Telephony is supposed to specifically point to a voice-only service or connection, though sometimes the li ...

systems, in which there are simply not enough

radio channel Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio sta ...

s available in a given

cell Cell most often refers to: * Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life Cell may also refer to: Locations * Monastic cell, a small room, hut, or cave in which a religious recluse lives, alternatively the small precursor of a monastery ...

or cells. This causes blocked calls or

dropped call A mobile phone signal (also known as reception and service) is the signal strength (measured in dBm) received by a mobile phone from a cellular network (on the downlink). Depending on various factors, such as proximity to a tower, any obstruction ...

s. However, it can also apply to

landline A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which uses ...

phones, in which not enough

trunking In telecommunications, trunking is a technology for providing network access to multiple clients simultaneously by sharing a set of circuits, carriers, channels, or frequencies, instead of providing individual circuits or channels for each clie ...

telephone circuit In telephony, the local loop (also referred to as the local tail, subscriber line, or in the aggregate as the last mile) is the physical link or circuit that connects from the demarcation point of the customer premises to the edge of the common ...

s are available into and out of any given

telephone exchange A telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It interconnects telephone subscriber lines or virtual circuits of digital syst ...

or equivalent switching office at any level of the

public switched telephone network The public switched telephone network (PSTN) provides Communications infrastructure, infrastructure and services for public Telecommunications, telecommunication. The PSTN is the aggregate of the world's circuit-switched telephone networks that ...

(PSTN). An MCE is typically caused by a sudden

disaster A disaster is a serious problem occurring over a short or long period of time that causes widespread human, material, economic or environmental loss which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources ...

of some sort, such as an

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...

explosion An explosion is a rapid expansion in volume associated with an extreme outward release of energy, usually with the generation of high temperatures and release of high-pressure gases. Supersonic explosions created by high explosives are known ...

. One of the earliest examples was the

Iroquois Theatre Fire The Iroquois Theatre fire occurred on December 30, 1903, at the Iroquois Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is the deadliest theater fire and the deadliest single-building fire in U.S. history, resulting in at least 602 deaths. Thea ...

in Chicago in 1903. The 1963

Kennedy assassination John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 un ...

represented a mass call event for

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...

. One of the most notable examples of a MCE was the

9/11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated Suicide attack, suicide List of terrorist incidents, terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, ...

. A more recent example was the 2013

Boston Marathon bombing The Boston Marathon bombing was a domestic terrorist attack that took place during the annual Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Two terrorists, brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, planted two homemade pressure cooker bombs, w ...

, in which mobile network service was so degraded by people checking on the safety of friends and family (or reporting their own status to others) that

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

s and the public both assumed that the networks had been shut down to prevent further remote

detonation Detonation () is a type of combustion involving a supersonic exothermic front accelerating through a medium that eventually drives a shock front propagating directly in front of it. Detonations propagate supersonically through shock waves with ...

s, although this was not the case with any

mobile phone company A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a wireless service provider, wireless carrier, cellular company, or mobile network carrier, is a provider of wireless communications services that owns or controls all the elements necessary to sel ...

. Access-class barring is one solution in such a situation, allowing

public safety Public security or public safety is the prevention of and protection from events that could endanger the safety and security of the public from significant danger, injury, or property damage. It is often conducted by a state government to ensure ...

(PS) personnel such as

emergency responder A certified first responder is a person who has completed a course and received certification in providing pre-hospital care for medical emergencies. Certified individuals should have received much more instruction than someone who is trained ...

s to have priority on the network, as well as general

emergency call Most public switched telephone networks have a single emergency telephone number (sometimes known as the universal emergency telephone number or the emergency services number) that allows a caller to contact local emergency services for assista ...

s to

public-safety answering point A public-safety answering point (PSAP), sometimes called public-safety access point, is a call center where emergency/non-emergency calls (like police, fire brigade, ambulance) initiated by any mobile or landline subscriber are terminated. It can ...

s (PSAPs). This typically only affects voice calls, therefore

text messaging Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible compute ...

is a very effective way of communication during an MCE, as it only needs a brief connection to the network to be sent or received, and uses almost nothing in terms of network resources like

bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...

. Mass call events can also be caused by planned events. In 1982, Eddie Murphy's

Larry the Lobster Larry the Lobster was the subject of a comedy sketch by Eddie Murphy that was aired live on ''Saturday Night Live'' on April 10, 1982. Background In an early example of interactive television, Murphy held Larry, a live lobster, aloft and dec ...

shtick on

Saturday Night Live ''Saturday Night Live'' (often abbreviated to ''SNL'') is an American late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC and Peacock. Michaels currently serves a ...

resulted in record call volume, as Murphy held a live

lobster Lobsters are a family (biology), family (Nephropidae, Synonym (taxonomy), synonym Homaridae) of marine crustaceans. They have long bodies with muscular tails and live in crevices or burrows on the sea floor. Three of their five pairs of legs ...

and declared that the show's audience would determine whether he lived or died via telephone calls. The gathering in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

for the 2009 U.S. Presidential Inauguration of

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

also created a MCE. In this case, network overload was avoided by deploying multiple cell-on-wheels (CoW) units with their own wireless backhauls. This was a particularly major situation for cell carriers because many attendees wanted to be live on the phone (via voice call or

video chat Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio and video signals by people in different locations for real time communication.McGraw-Hill Concise Ency ...

) with others who could not attend the ceremony, further increasing network usage. {{Telecomm-stub Telephony Mobile telecommunications