As many of you know, cell phone service is usually atrocious during festivals as there are thousands of people attempting to use their phones to communicate, upload videos and pictures and to stream the going-on’s of the festival. To help with this AT&T announced in a blog post on July 13th that they are attempting to provide a more comprehensive cell phone coverage during festivals, wishes to provide cell phone support by the use of drones. The drones would be like an internet extenders, bringing cell phone coverage closer without the creation of extra cell phone towers.
“This week, we reached another milestone by launching the trial phase of our national drone program.” – source
The predicted creation would be to use these drones for what AT&T referred to as “large events or even rapid disaster response.” The second option seems to be a little more of a useful scenario. In both situations both, cell phone towers become overloaded with people attempting to reach out for assistance or to get in touch with others.
“…our national drone program is driving innovation, and focuses on how AT&T and our customers can benefit from drone-based solutions.” – Source
Service providers often bring signal boosters to areas of high concentration, like large events or disaster relief centers, but the deployment of drones would mean faster response and less congestion from vehicles attempting to get into the area.
The name of the drones would be “Flying COWs”, COWs being short for Cell On Wings”.