[Badger]

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Cell lines were hell last night

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We did our best. Broke every usage record we bother to keep track of. T-Mobile Minneapolis processed in excess of 24 million minutes of usage last night.

We had techs rolling to the scene by 6:30 with extra equipment to soak up the load around the bridge. Unfortunately, the network was spiking everywhere.

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Thanks for working on that. I don't live in Minneapolis anymore, but I still carry my cell phone number from when I did. I was having some usage problems, and couldn't call any of my MN friend's cells.

Were there any notices to not talk on your cell phones? I'm not sure if my phone would tax the system at all since I live in Texas now, but I stayed off it anyways.

I called my folk's house and nobody picked up, then I tried both their cell phones to no avail. I talked myself out of worrying about it even though a lot of my friends and family use that bridge daily. The chances of them being on it at any one instant are really, really small. I finally talked to my parents around 8:30PM (an hour after I heard about it). They live in the Twin Cities and it sounded like things were pretty crazy there. All things considered, I expected it to be a lot worse when I heard 35W fell into the Mississippi during rush hour.

I noticed I was getting a bunch of phone calls, but figured that it was people calling because it was my birthday. (I didn't answer because I was at dinner with friends, not because I ignore my friends).

It was kind of frustrating thinking about how many people were clogging up the phone lines, when I just wanted to make a 30 second phone call to make sure my family was alright. I understand how a lot of people panic in a situation like this, call their families and then want to chat for an hour.