AT&T Labs Research

When Cell Towers Fail: Quantifying the Customer Impact

by: He Yan, Zihui Ge, Matt Osinski, Jennifer Yates, Wed Mar 06 13:46:00 EST 2013

When cell towers fail, what happens to customers? In a resilient network where customers may simply move from a failed tower to another one nearby, the answer is not always clear. And it can’t be captured by manual assessments that rely only on counting the number of failed towers and estimating population density, and thus ignore how an outage may be dispersed over a wide area.

What’s needed is an in-depth analysis of network data. It’s why AT&T Researchers created a tower-outage analyzer, which looks at the complex interactions among customers and cell towers to intelligently assess the customer experience across an entire impact area. Read more.

Robert Miller Named a Healthcare Innovator-Hero

For his innovations in technology and communications to improve healthcare, Robert Miller was honored to receive the 2013 New Jersey Healthcare Hero award by Horizon Blue Cross/Blue Shield, a number of NJ Hospital Groups, and NJBiz Magazine. With devices such as smart slippers for preventing falls and a VOC-detecting device for warning of a possible asthma attack, Miller is aiming to transform healthcare from merely treating sickness to maintaining wellness.

Better Outcomes without Compromising Privacy

In this New Tech City interview beginning at 4:30, Karrie Hanson describes some technologies from AT&T Research that aim to improve life without compromising privacy. Projects range from smart slippers that sense walking patterns, to a device that warns of a possible asthma attack, to voice biometrics for caller authentication. All rely on the network to securely transfer data from where it’s created to where it’s needed. For more about the projects, go here.

Mobile App Optimization Gets "Sexy"

Application battery performance "sexy"? Yes, according to this article, which describes how IBM is integrating the AT&T Application Resource Optimizer (ARO) with its own development software. The goal is to enable enterprises to create mobile apps that use less battery power and are more network-friendly.

Created at AT&T Research, ARO is a free diagnostic tool available from the AT&T Developer Program.