London Tower Block Fire

I'm not sure if it has been mentioned here already but the gent shown on GMB yesterday praying at his window was rescued and is now recovering in hospital.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2017/06/14/TELEMMGLPICT000131898383-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqNJkqD2BczZYx2Air6y6QQ3S9dvvs0zusPP10dFL67pA.jpeg

We are now in an era where major news has to be covered as long as possible and as dominating as possible.

If not people will complain that it is disgraceful that they are showing XYZ instead of the major news, or will just so happen to pretend to turn on at that point and say the channel isn't covering it at all.

He was rescued at noon,

4G is congested in North Kensington going by what Sky News are using to cover Sadiq Khan's visit.

Of course the networks will be congested there because of public activity, and probably being used by the blue light services ( who will receive network priority) Additionally I suspect the tower itself also hosted some mobile network transmitters, so the loss of those will have an impact on total available capacity.

Helicopter is up, thought this would be relevent

I feel very sorry for all those people who were trapped inside while fire was still burning inside. I also agree with the internet - I think it's horrible that GMB just kept cameras on that poor man throughout their coverage yesterday morning.

Aren't emergency services are still on TETRA? I think the priority on any SIMs on public networks is for calls only.


Apart from the number of public there are a lot of broadcasters in the area without trucks (or with trucks but working away from them) using bonded cellular connections (WMT / Live U) - my colleagues down there were saying the mobile networks seemed pretty congested. Add to that the fact there is a lot of metal structures in the area around / under the Westway and you've got the combination of two issues that means you're bound to run into problems. (Metal structures won't help radio cams either.)

Yes, the National Airwave Service is still in use until at least 2019, however some apps used in command and control use 4G including a lot of uplinks and downlinks into GT (the Met events control) the pan London emergency command centre.

Satellite is used to route a lot of the voice traffic as it is often cheaper than airwave being paid for per transmission and reception, per cell.

I dont know, I still think it strange he was kept in the building that long, but at least people know was alive, and maybe GMB wanted to highlight some good.

Victoria Derbyshire showed some very poor judgment by allowing the eyewitness to carry on speaking. Clearly it was a horrific situation, but as you point out, what the man was saying was entirely speculative. What Derbyshire should have done is cut him off at an appropriate place, but link it straight into something from her. Then it wouldn't have been obvious she was cutting him off.

You might be right, but that possibility is complicated with ever increasing use of VoLTE ?