Why was there no cell phone service on 9/11?

Because there were cell towers on top of the Twin Towers that were knocked out. TV was also affected and I remember Sue Simmons describing how they had to "borrow" from a station in New Jersey to broadcast.

If I recall correctly, there were so many calls the system was overwhelmed. The popular news site were also jammed from too much traffic and were very slow to load. I recall going to the BBC site because that wasn't as slow as CNN which was at a crawl.

I was watching some of CNN's live coverage of the day. It was from Atlanta then. They seem a little out of step with what is going on. They actual show the plane hitting the second tower live but the anchor must not have been looking at the video and he doesn't notice it happen. No gasp or anything.

Twenty years ago cell phone service was nowhere near as advanced or sophisticated as it is now. Twenty years previously it hardly existed at all.

I saw one news clip with someone using a pay phone and a cop chasing them to start moving uptown. (was sort of odd to see a payphone)

Two reasons that I remember. There were telecommunication antenna on top of the WTC that got knocked out, and also, so many people were making calls, the lines were jammed. I remember not being able to use my cell in Manhattan for a good week afterwards, and my landline was hit or miss.

when did cell phones become something everyone had?

In 2001 were they common?

R7, they were common, but smart phones weren't really around yet.

No, they weren't. They weren't something everyone had and they were still appropriately banned in class.

OP must be a clueless millennial who has no idea of history.

No one had cell phones in 2001.

It would be odd if it happened today. People would be lingering around the towers trying to get video or a photo instead of running.

[quote] People would be lingering around the towers trying to get video or a photo instead of running.

Which filter goes best with debris and falling bodies?

people had phones, they just didnt use them 24/7 like they do today. I had a nokia. To text, you had to press the number buttons to get the right letter.

Analog signals, limited frequency space, fallen comm towers

[quote]No one had cell phones in 2001.

Oh, yes they DID. Remember that they were featured in the Matrix, which came out in 1999.

That's why it's so odd there are all these clips of the planes crashing into the building. Everyone aiming their camcorder at Tower 1? Doubt it.

R10 christ on a stick, I was on my third cell phone by 2001 and I knew plenty of people that had cell phones in 2001. The shittiest thing about the Internet in the 21st century is that people think they can just belch out facts like they actually fucking know something when they weren't even alive. God I hate anyone under 40.

[quote]people had phones, they just didnt use them 24/7 like they do today. I had a nokia.

BARELY anyone had cell phones.

R17: just because you had one doesn't mean EVERYONE had one. Everyone isn't just like you. Stop belching out facts like you actually fucking know something when you operate in your little bubble. God I hate people who can't see past their own reflection.

[quote] Twenty years ago cell phone service was nowhere near as advanced or sophisticated as it is now. Twenty years previously it hardly existed at all.

Wait, has it been twenty years already? Time flies, and time dies, and then you don’t have to endure anymore.

Why didn’t they just text if they couldn’t call? Texting uses WIFI and doesn’t rely on cell service.

I was in Ground Zero. I had cell and internet until about 530 in the afternoon.

Check my TikTok of me on 9/10, in the WTC...I was dancing shirtless, woo hooooo

[quote] Why didn’t they just text if they couldn’t call? Texting uses WIFI and doesn’t rely on cell service.

Texting wasn’t nearly ubiquitous like it is now and thus wasn’t a usual means of communication. If one had text capability one didn’t necessarily know whether the recipient had text service or even knowledge of it.

[quote] Check my TikTok of me on 9/10, in the WTC...I was dancing shirtless, woo hooooo

Just because you had Windows on the World doesn’t mean we wanted a window into your world.

R18 fuck off you filthy troll

Many many people had cell phones in 2001.

I got my first one in 2000 and I was a poor college kid.

You're a liar R26.

'Many' people did not have them.

If you did, you were not a 'poor college kid'

What kind did you have, and who paid for it?

[quote] What kind did you have

The more odd part - many of those planes did not have plane phones and yet, there are all these cell phone calls.

You cannot make a phone call on your cell phone from a plane. Try it. You're out of reach at 35000 feet.

That's just another oddity and questionable fact about 9/11. No way these people were using their cell phones at any altitude less than 6000 feet.

r27. And even most of the people in the community theater production I was in had them. They were the solid kind that were popular before flip phones. Hard to carry in your pocket. They weren't that expensive.

This article says most people got them in the early 2000s:

but for a lot of older Millennials, it was probably during the early 2000s. So today for Throwback Thursday, let's remind ourselves of all the cell phones from the early 2000s we were all

R30 - whatever - those cell phones were pieces of shit - as were our network in 2001 compared to today.

And - those cell phone DID NOT WORK on planes - just like today.

Regardless of how they worked people had them. Which was the point of your question. And no one said they worked on planes. (although in the film United 93 I remember a woman closing her flip phone and giving it to the girl next to her and saying call your people.)

We so invested in this? You sound deranged.

Most people has shitty phones back then. Crude text, shitty reception, no cam. The Motorola Razor which was a flip phone with touch buttons and a crude color screen was the iPhone of it's day but that didn't even come out until 2004.

Vast right-wing conspiracy.

I don't know anybody who DIDN'T have a cell phone in 2001. But they were cell phones, not smart phones. The iPhone didn't come out until 2007.

I had Nokia 3210 with B&W screen though, no camera.

R10 must be too poor or too old.

I don't know anybody who DIDN'T have a cell phone in 2001. But they were cell phones, not smart phones. The iPhone didn't come out until 2007.

They were crude, expensive and scarce. But apparently someone gave one to everyone in New York that day.

The lines were overloaded. Everyone calls everyone else when there’s a disaster.

I had my cellphone/mobile on Sept 11th...I remember calling my mom from work and she wanted to know if I wanted to come to the house in Long Island or stay in Manhattan. At that time in the morning we did not know if there was going to be another attack and people were leaving Manhattan in droves. I decided to stay in the city...my roommate high tailed it back home out of the city.

47% of households in the UK had a mobile phone in 2000 R38, was the US behind the tech curve?

The landlines were down, too. I was trying to call my mother who was on vacation in D.C. and who I thought was coming home that day (it was a Tuesday, but it turned out she wasn't actually coming home until Thursday) and our work phones couldn't get through. A girl I sat next to at work had a cell phone and she let me use it, and that call went right through.

Cell phones weren't common like they are these days but they'd been around for a while, think those "X-Files" cell phones with the little antennas on them.

R25 : Who's the filthy troll? Quit pretending that things were different than they actually were.

Also, there was no texting over wifi, pretty sure phones couldn't connect to anything but a cellular network at that point.

chill, R27.

Yes, MANY people had cell phones in 2001. Not all, not most, but yes, MANY.

Landlines were still the primary service in the Untied States. I went to grad school in the early 90's and remember the big question for everybody: should we get one of these? Everyone in Europe and Asia seemed to have them, but did we ever think it would take hold here? That answered itself pretty quickly.

Like the other poster said, just because YOU didn't have one, it doesn't follow that BARELY ANYONE had one.

Cells had internet service in the 1990s.

By 2000 the Nokia 3310 was the most popular cell phone, and it came with "airplane mode," so clearly you could use it on an airplane.

Even if you couldn't, planes back then had phones you could use with your phone card or a credit card. They were on the back of the seat in front of you, called "Airfones" if I recall.

Listen bonehead, they were able to call on cell phones on the plane because they were flying low altitude before they hit thier target as some of them mentioned that they were flying too low.

Wiki has the best answer:

"After the attack, the cell phone network of New York City was rapidly overloaded (a mass call event) as traffic doubled over normal levels. Cell phone traffic also overloaded across the East Coast, leading to crashes of the cell phone network. Verizon's downtown wire phone service was interrupted for days and weeks because of cut subscriber cables, and to the 140 West Street exchange being shut for days. Capacity between Brooklyn and Manhattan was also diminished by cut trunk cables."

The humble Blackberry continued to work, however.

R41, I was living in London in 1998 a lot of people had mobile phones. You had to have a mobile phone in order to socialize and meet up with friends. That's when I learned what an SMS was...no one said I'm sending a "text"...it was I'll send you a "SMS". When I returned to NYC I was one of the few people regularly using a mobile phone. Back then I had a NOKIA...

Cell phone markets were too fragmented in the US in the 1990s while cell phones were very omnipresent in Europe at the time.

Cell phones were plentiful in 2001, lots of people had a mobile phone usually a Nokia candy bar shaped one or something similar the difference today is that almost everyone has a smart phone.

Seriously if don’t know what you are talking about shut the fuck up and stop spreading misinformation.

Cell phones were not the only issue, land lines were also overloaded. I remember trying to call my cousins in NYC and was not able to get through on the cell or landline that day.

I worked at Cingular (soon to become AT&T Wireless) in 2001. Cell phone penetration nationally was about 40% and 60-70% in major metros. There was multimedia messaging and the beginnings of email over some phones like the Nokia communicator. There was no Wifi integration yet and voice over IP was confined to enterprise (those ubiquitous Cisco phones). There were both cellphone and Airfone calls made from the planes (a clever attendant on one made one on her cell from the back of her plane). The towers cut NYC service but the main problem throughout the day was the nationwide grid overloading with drama queens in Iowa convinced they were next and dialing meemaw to say goodbye. I had a cool NTT DoCoMo phone from Japan with wifi and cellular but there weren’t really apps yet.

Wrong r10. Maybe you're thinking of 1991? My mom had a cell phone in 2001 and she wasn't even a high-flying business person, just a teacher.

The had phones on the backs of the seats on airplanes back then. That's what people used to use. You could make calls at any altitude. It was very expensive though.

Also, 45% of people had a cell phone in 2001.

[quote] was the iPhone of it's day

Oh, dear.

I’m sure somewhere my 2001 era Nokia cell still has a charge 😜

[quote] I don't know anybody who DIDN'T have a cell phone in 2001. But they were cell phones, not smart phones.

Correct. Some posters on here seem to be confusing cell phones with smart phones. Also, R23 is correct about texting. I remember my cell phone from that period, I had it for about 2 years before I even realized it could text. ( I ran into some trick and he asked why I didn't respond to his text; he then showed me on my phone where to read and send texts).

R57, see above. Less than half the US population had a cell phone in 2001.

My first cellphone was an Audiovox Minivox that I got at Cellular One on Rockville Pike in Rockville, MD in 1995 or 1996.

In 2001 I think I still had the typical Nokia 5110/5190 in blue. I remember upgrading to the Sanyo RL-4920 a few years later but I don’t remember which phone I had in between.

Pre-2001, my workplace distributed the Motorola StarTAC to directors, department heads and other employees who needed to be available by phone when they weren’t in the office.

I was a senior in high school on 9/11 and had recently graduated to a flip phone from my beloved Motorola Two-Way Pager! Texting wasn't nearly as common then, as it was a total pain in the ass requiring punching the corresponding numbers to form a word as mentioned above. At any rate, it took my mom and I about an hour to reach each other as my school was evacuated. Pretty much all the 22 million people in the NYC area were trying to call friends and family, hence the outages.

In 2001 I had a cell phone (Nokia), I also gave my sister a cell.phone the year before. I lived in Manhattan on September 11. I was able to call my friend to see if he was okay, I was also able to talk to my mother. The only problem was that the lines were clogged and the system was busy so it took many attempts to get through. After I touched base with friends and family I did not want to talk much. Many of us New Yorkers went to see if we could help or assist those in need so we were talking directly to each other.

I lived in NYC on 911. Land lines weren't working either. I think it was probably due to overload and missing towers downtown.

I had a Nokia cell phone but it had very limited minutes. No one talked on their cell phones all day.

I was 15 on 9/11 and had received my first cell phone the previous Christmas. They were allowed in my school but had to be turned off and put away during classes. At that point probably half of my classmates had them, in part because many of my classmates had just started driving and their parents thought it was useful for safety reasons. (A friend of mine would slowly become an outlier as he refused to get a cell phone all through college and grad school, until about 2010).

On 9/11, the cell networks in DC were not functioning because too many people were trying to use them at once. I was able to reach my parents on a pay phone inside the school—I don’t even remember now how I knew their office numbers. I can’t possibly have had them memorized?

I don’t think I learned about texting until at least three or four years after that.

R52 has the best statistics on this thread so far. Cell phones were common for people in certain industries and scioeconomic classes (read: cell phones weren't cheap until several years later, so not everyone could afford one). Like most people, I spent about half of 9/11 on the phone, and didn't think about the amount of minutes I was going through until AT&T announced mid-day that all long distance was free for the day. I spoke with a contact in the industry (I worked peripherally in telecom) who told me phone traffic was unprecedented and the network was handling it beautifully. It was a moment of pride that the entire network didn't collapse under the strain.

Didn’t airplanes used to have phones in the seatbacks? You swiped your card to use them I think.

Link

R67 Yes, and that’s how some of the Flight 93 people reached their family members. (They show this in the film United 93.)

[quote] I don’t even remember now how I knew their office numbers. I can’t possibly have had them memorized?

I had my parents' numbers memorized then. Today I don't even have my mother's cell phone number memorized.

Shell phone shervish.

Cell phones are featured in “Clueless”!

[quote] Cell phones are featured in “Clueless”!

Appropriate given some of the posters on this thread.

In 2001, I had a Sony Ericsson flip phone. I'm not an early adopter of technology, but I did have a cell phone back then. My mom actually had a cell phone before I had one. IIRC, hers was a large Nokia phone.

[quote]Twenty years ago cell phone service was nowhere near as advanced or sophisticated as it is now.

On 9/11, and during the 2003 NYC blackout, I had a nice lengthy conversation with my mother - to see if she was okay - on my old dependable copper line telephone, no power required. I wish I still had it, such as when cable and power were down in my building last week during Ida.

If cell phones then were as ubiquitous and as technically capable as they are today, thousands more would have died. The streets surrounding the WTC would have been full of dumb cunts photographing/recording the towers when the buildings collapsed on top of them.

R76, are you also R11?

R76 Absolutely agree, phone zombies walking around aimlessly staring at their phones or trying to get the perfect instagramable picture. Both are a hazard.

I had one of these back in the day, I think it came out that fallowing year. Not a flip phone, you had to twist to open.

In this clip there is no plane- just explosion sounds.

[quote] came out that fallowing year.

Oh, dear.