Tallying Inaugural Cell Phone Traffic

The best technologies are ones that work in the background and don't have to think about making them work. That approach applies to the National Communications System and its wired and wireless emergency communications systems, which withstood the test of Inauguration Day.

Unofficial estimates put the crowd size on Jan. 20 at just under 2 million people, and evidently a lot of those folks spent their time yammering on cell phones rather than listening to the speeches. Cell carriers worried that the traffic could overwhelm their networks.