# Infrastructure melting down in US today?

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2003-08-28T07:42:05Z


Just a few minutes ago, I was on my vonage IP phone in my house in Tokyo sipping coffee in my air-conditioned living room listening to the birds outside. I called a friend in Virginia on his cell phone. It rang and dropped. He called me back on a land line. The Verison cell tower just went out in his area. As we were talking, his power went out. He had to switch to a phone that didn't use power. While we were talking, he did a clean shut-down of his computer and his UPS and went outside to see why his diesel backup generator didn't kick in. Then he went and started pulling out all of the oil lamps that he had just put away.

What's going on over there guys? Maybe the power companies and carriers should just step aside and let some new people run the critical infrastructure...

Although I can't say Japan is necessarily better, my phone still works and my air-conditioning is still working. ;-)





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