You may have noticed cellular service was spotty or non-existent for a few days last week in most of our area. There was an outage of the infrastructure that supplies the cell sites in the area with connectivity. We rely heavily on cellular communication for everyday operations and every emergency incident we respond to. We use cellular connectivity for incident alerting, routing/directions, the transmission of EKGs (electrocardiograms) to cardiac care hospitals, speaking to a medical command physician, GPS tracking of units, the transmission of vital signs to our electronic patient charting system, hospital alerting, vehicle telematics, looking up medical records, and making and receiving regular phone calls.
After monitoring and analyzing the problem, we became concerned about our ability to communicate effectively during normal operations. As such, we requested a specialized resource from FirstNet to ensure the provision of cellular service. On Thursday at around 2:30 a.m., a SatCOLT (Satellite Cells on Light Truck), which is a vehicle that has mobile cell sites that connect via satellite and does not rely on commercial power supply, arrived and was placed online. The asset was placed in the Birchwood Lakes community, centralized to impacted sites. The asset remained on-site for six days, and when normal service was restored, the device was demobilized. A SatCOLT has limited capabilities and only provides service on a particular cellular radio band utilized by first responders. As an added bonus, it allows the public to connect to 911 from their cell phone.
We want to thank the Birchwood Lakes Community Association for their support and FirstNet by AT&T for providing us with this important asset at no cost.
Note: Even if it appears you don’t have cellular service you can still summon emergency services. Your cell phone can connect to any available provider, regardless of your subscription, so if your mobile phone shows no service, you can still try to make the call; 911 calls can often be routed through any network in the area. If the call doesn’t go through, don’t give up! Try repositioning to a higher location or moving to a window, as this can sometimes help obtain a signal. If your call doesn’t connect, locate a nearby landline phone.
Delaware Township Volunteer Ambulance Corps
Dingmans Ferry
This message was originally posted on the ambulance corps’ Facebook page.