Cell Phone Call – From Athens To America

Setting a new record for the cellular phone industry, athletes and visitors to the 2004 Summer Olympic games in Athens, Greece nearly made the cell phone call a new Olympic event! A California-based company, Aligent, estimated that an additional five million people made a cell phone call outside of their home area during the Olympic games.

With so many visitors and travellers attending events like the Olympic Games, it's easy to see how a new record could be set. Athletes used cell phones to place long distance calls to friends and family back home. News reporters and journalist rely heavily on cell phones and other wireless technologies to report on the games.

A lot of time and money was spent by Greek cell phone companies in order to prepare for the volume of cellular phone calls expected during the summer Olympic Games. In fact, the total number of mobile towers in Athens tripled in the months before the games. The state-owned phone company spent $372 million improving Greece's telecommunications infrastructure and made sure that it was ready to handle hundreds of thousands of wireless calls per day.

The preparation was an apparent success since no major cell phone problems were reported during the Olympic games. Although Aligent did report that British visitors to Athens were having trouble using cell phones to access the Internet, the problem appeared to be a configuration glitch rather than a result of a network overloaded by cell phone traffic.

Also see; cellular phones.

Author Notes:

Jack Adams contributes and publishes news editorial to http://www.cell-phones-n-plans.com. A cellular phone industry resource that features service plan comparisons, cellular phone reviews and articles.