ATMs get bumped for social networking during Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras in New Orleans was even more festive than usual this year. Aside from the crowds of locals and tourists in for the parades, many natives who had moved away returned to the city to celebrate the Saints' win in the Super Bowl by seeing the team's victory parade, which was held during the traditional week-and-a-half long Carnival season.

One thing that put a damper on the city's celebratory mood was that many local ATMs that functioned on wireless networks were often inoperable during the Mardi Gras festivities.

The city is no stranger to down networks. Hurricane Katrina affected the city's infrastructure, too. But George Peterson, owner of ATM ISO First Assurance ATM of New Orleans, says his machines had many problems that exceeded what one should expect during Mardi Gras. In some cases the outages rivaled Katrina.

"With so many people clustered into a relatively small space, cellular services became congested, especially as more users upload files and pics to Twitter and Facebook via their smart phones," Peterson said.

"The technology has passed the infrastructure of what the cell phone providers have," Peterson said. "More people are using the digital side of cell phones and that's what is causing the problem."

Wireless ATMs are affected because their wireless usage counts as data usage.

"Some wireless companies allow voice calls to override data traffic," said Jayne DeMerchant, general manager of DPL Group, a telecommunications company based in New Brunswick, Canada.

If the towers get overloaded, then the wireless companies will start using data channels to accommodate voice calls. Internet, texting, and ATM usage would all fall under the umbrella of data. As a result, wireless ATMs have trouble functioning when systems get overloaded.

At what point does a crowd hit critical mass? Brian Stein, senior tech support specialist for DPL Group, says it's not a hard statistic. Anywhere from 10 people to 20,000 people in a small area may cause calls to be dropped. When the numbers reach between 30,000 and 50,000 people, bigger problems can occur.

What can be done? In some cases, cellular providers have agreements with each other to piggyback towers if one provider gets overloaded. However, this has its limits, because if it is a big enough event, then it's likely that all providers will feel a strain.

Stein says that in Canada, certain companies are assigning specific amounts of data channels for large events. So regardless of how busy the voice channels become, some channels remain open for data.

As more people purchase smart phones, congestion will remain an issue. Natasha Royer Coons, managing director of TeraNova Consulting Group Inc. of San Diego, says AT&T's data usage increased 6,000 percent from the end of 2006 to the end of 2009.

Spectrum space also is an issue. FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said in October 2009 that the greatest threat to the future of mobile in America was a looming "spectrum crisis." A spectrum is a radio wave that carries signals in an orderly fashion through the air. The licensed spectrum that wireless companies use is roughly between 700MHz and 2.5 GHz. This is the prime real estate for wireless companies, but there is a chance that companies may run out of it, because mobile data transmissions take up more bandwidth than voice calls.

The same spectrum depth that has worked for years in accommodating voice calls may not be able to handle the avalanche of data that comes with texted photos, videos, etc.

(Illustration by Karrett Barbosa.)