Ericsson Friday announced dismal earnings and said it plans to lay off 12,000 employees. Bellwether Nokia also cut forecasts. Against this precarious industry backdrop, the phone makers themselves are clearly more worried about lifting slumping handset sales than acting upon the concerns of an industry about phone service that hasn't yet been released. With aggregate growth in the wireless sector slowing and competition heating up, we may well see the slightly premature launch of new services that haven't been adequately tested in the field. That could spell certain disaster in today's massively complex networks.
Carriers share some networks, or pass off customer coverage to each other.
Pieces of a carrier's network, made up of towers and bay stations, are located across the globe. Inside just one of these bay stations is an entire world of computing, with up to 50 applications, four different central processing units and millions of pieces of software. They are pretty crash-resistant. You can never discount the possibility, but outside of computers, very few electronic products crash. Except for two weeks ago, of course.