"How often do you find that terrestrial communications infrastructure is the first to be rendered useless in natural disasters?" I asked Oisin Walton, head of communications and international relations of Telecoms Sans Frontieres. "It all depends," he said. "We have noticed that mobile networks are more robust and are not always as affected as they used to be. If you take flood situations where base stations are on top of hills, for example, the GSM network would not be really affected. "But that doesn't mean that it won't be saturated [with calls], because you have too many people calling for help or to make sure relatives are safe, and aid workers using the same lines. "Landlines will normally be the first to go in a flood - and they take longer to fix, too. In earthquakes, especially if it's a strong earthquake, everything is down.
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