Guardly Blog
As the world surveys the damage dealt by the recent earthquake and Hurricane Irene, the Guardly Team is doing our best to learn from this experience to further enhance the mobile safety options available to people during an emergency.
When disaster strikes, one of the first things we do is reach for the phone: whether it’s to make a call for help, or alert loved ones of impending danger, phones have become an essential part of our emergency toolkits.
However, during a natural disaster, our heavy reliance on phones can lead to a shutdown of the vital networks that sustain them.
Case in point being the August 23 earthquake. Immediately following the tremors, several mobile phone providers reported heavy call volume, which led to network congestion, call spikes and service disruptions for up to an hour. Cellular relay stations have a limit on the number of calls they can simultaneously handle. Furthermore, calls of emergency response personnel are given priority on the network. This can result in one’s call getting cut off, or not going through at all.
Aside from voice calling, cell phone users have other lines of communication available to them in the course of an emergency. Short Message Service (SMS) texts require a fraction of the bandwidth of a call and can be typed anywhere at anytime. Emails are another alternative, as long as a wireless connection is available.
Guardly’s mobile personal safety app brings all of these avenues together: with just one-tap on their phone, users can call, text and email contacts in their personal safety network, as well as dial 911. And if users experience a service disruption, Guardly will continue to search for a network and automatically resend all alerts once a connection has been established.
Visit the Guardly website to find out more. Guardly is available on iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 smartphones. Guardly for Android is in development and will be announced shortly. Stay safe!
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Read our customer campus safety study showing how Guardly helped improve emergency response times by 44% at a school.
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